Redirect Console Output/Error for logging/testing

[Dobby]

I just found out something really useful after tearing my hair out because I couldn't figure out a problem with one of my unattended application installs. Not seen this posted anywhere so thought I'd share it.

SomeCommandOrApp >> output.log 2>&1

Basically the last part says redirect error output to normal output which is also redirected (and appended in this case) to output.log. Now I know all about stdin, stdout and stderr but I didn't realise you could redirect stderr as well. This appears to be a new thing in XP (new .. cough .. 5 years old .. cough )

For more info Microsoft have a page on it.

Now I log all my output so I can see when an app/command didn't run properly.

Hope other find this useful.