How to pipe the output of one command to another in Linux
We could spend the rest of our days together Linux and never touch command line, The reason I still choose to use Terminal is not only because it is efficient, but because it has a lot of very useful tricks that you can use. One such trick is called “piping”.
In effect, piping takes the output of the first command and uses it in the next command. You can do this with as much piping as you like. You can pipe the output of command A to command B, then pipe the output of command B to command C, then pipe the output of command C to command D, and so on.
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Piping sends data from one command and uses that data in the next command. And the transmission continues until the last command is executed, data always flows from right to left. This is important information and data piping flow is always one-way.
How to use piping in Linux
Things necessary: Piping in the Linux command line works on all Linux distributions. All you need is a running instance of any Linux distribution.
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The syntax of the piped command looks like this:
Command 1 | Command 2 | Command 3
The | character indicates piping, and bash reads it as such.
First, let’s talk about commands that connect with pipes.
Before we actually get to the plumbing, we’ll first show you how to create a new file containing a list of colors. Create the file with the following command:
Paste the following content into that file:
orange
yellow
red
blue
green
purple
black
pink
Save and close the file.
The output looks like this:
Black Blue Green Orange Pink Purple Red Yellow
You can combine && and | instead of running these commands individually. To do this in one line.already discussed How to combine Linux commands for a more efficient experience Use && characters. Use this technique with pipe commands.
First, create a colors.txt file and add content with two commands joined by && like this:
touch colors.txt && echo -e "OrangenYellownRednBluenGreennPurplenBlacknPink" >> colors
Above, using the -e option, echo A command that interprets escape sequences. In this case, the n escape sequence creates a new line after each color.
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before that, touch Command to create a new file. So the file is created and the content is added to her one line at a time.
Before doing anything make sure to delete the current colors.txt file with the following command: rm color.txt.
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What we do here is add the first two commands and use the cat and sort commands via a pipe. Cat reads the contents of the file into the terminal and sort sorts the output. In summary, this command looks like this:
touch colors.txt && echo -e "OrangenYellownRednBluenGreennPurplenBlacknPink" >> colors.txt && cat colors.txt | sort
The output of the above command will be:
Black Blue Green Orange Pink Purple Red Yellow
One thing to keep in mind here is that the command above only does one pipe: Cat color.txt | Sorting.the output of cat color.txt The command is sent to the sort command and the results are displayed.
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This is how piping works on the Linux command line. This is a very useful technique that can be used to make working with the command line even more efficient.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/how-to-pipe-the-output-of-one-command-to-another-in-linux/#ftag=RSSbaffb68 How to pipe the output of one command to another in Linux
