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Command Line 3

Redirection & Piping

Redirecting output to file: >
command > filename

Takes the output of command and saves it in filename. This will overwrite the file if it already exists.

Redirecting output and appending to file: >>
command >> filename

Takes the output of command and appends it to the end of the content of filename. This will create the file if it does not yet exist.

Piping: |
command1 | command2

Pipes the results from command1 as input to command2, and then the results of command2 are printed to the console.

Lets see how it works

First, lets install a new command fortune

  • mac: brew install fortune
  • ubuntu: sudo apt-get install fortune
  1. Redirect:
fortune > wisething.txt
  1. Pipe
fortune | cowsay
  1. Pipe then Redirect
fortune | cowsay > wisecow.txt

❇️ Example: Redirection

  1. Redirect a fact about planet mars into the mars.txt.
echo "Mars is dusty." > ~/Development/universe/solar_system/planets/mars.txt
  1. Add another mars fact to mars.txt.
echo "Mars has an 687 day year." >> ~/Development/universe/solar_system/planets/mars.txt
  1. Cat the contents of mars.txt.
cat ~/Development/universe/solar_system/planets/mars.txt
  1. Make sure there is at least one newline at the end of mars.txt.

You can check if there is a newline at the end of the file if there is no % sign that appears at the end of the file.

In this screenshot, the first example with the % at the end has no newline. The latter example does.

❇️ Example: piping

Count the number of characters in the string "hello world" using wc.

echo "hello world" | wc -c

Count the number of lines in the file mars.txt

cat ~/Development/universe/solar_system/planets/mars.txt | wc -l

Count the number of characters in the first line of mars.txt

cat ~/Development/universe/solar_system/planets/mars.txt | head -n 1 | wc -c

➡️ Try It

Count the number of characters in mars.txt Count the number of characters in the last line of mars.txt

❇️ Example: piping

Count number of folders in the universe folder.

cd ~/Development/universe
find . -type d | wc -l

➡️ Try It

Count number of files in the universe folder.

Slackcat

Lets install a new command-line tool. On macOS use brew install slackcat. For linux, see the bottom of this page for instructions.

Configure slackcat by running this command and following the instructions in your web browser:

slackcat --configure

❇️ Example

Let's use slackchat to send a simple message to the #scratchwork channel.

echo "hello world" | slackcat -c scratchwork

➡️ Try It

Notice how the message is being sent as a snippet. Figure out how to send a normal, non-snippet, message using slackcat.

➡️ Try It

  1. Count the total number of files and folders in the ~/Development/universe/ directory and send this to the person sitting next to you using slackcat. Use only one line and piping. You can use the --noop flag to first test it out without sending the message, then you can remove it to send the message. (hint: start with tree)
  1. In the ~/Development/universe directory, run ls, pipe the output of that into slackcat and send it to the #scratchwork channel. This time, make sure to send it as a snippet.

❇️ Example: piping and redirection

House Office Expenditure Data: https://projects.propublica.org/represent/expenditures

  1. Let's start a new directory for the house expenditure data.

    cd ~/Development
mkdir house-expenditure
cd house-expenditure

  2. Download the Q2 2017 expenditure detail data and pipe it into a file.

    curl "https://projects.propublica.org/congress/assets/staffers/2017Q2-house-disburse-detail.csv" > 2017Q2-house-disburse-detail.csv

  3. Print the header (first line) of this file.

    head -n 1 2017Q2-house-disburse-detail.csv

  4. Print the last 12 lines of this file.

    tail -n 12 2017Q2-house-disburse-detail.csv

  5. Count the number of lines in this file.

    cat 2017Q2-house-disburse-detail.csv | wc -l

  6. Count the number of rows in this file that contains the word "technology" (case insensitive)

    cat 2017Q2-house-disburse-detail.csv | grep -i technology | wc -l

  7. Return only the rows containing the word "technology" and redirect the output into a file. Keep the header.

    head -1 2017Q2-house-disburse-detail.csv > technology.csv
cat 2017Q2-house-disburse-detail.csv | grep -i technology >> technology.csv

  8. Grep a word of your choice and send the first 5 lines to #scratchwork channel on slack.

    cat 2017Q2-house-disburse-detail.csv | grep -i technology | head -n 5 | slackcat --filename technology.csv -c scratchwork