Redirecting standard output

You know that running the date command will display the current date on your terminal:

elliot@ubuntu-linux:~$ date 
Sat May 11 06:02:44 CST 2019

Now by using the greater than sign >, you can redirect the output of the date command to a file instead of your terminal! Have a look:

elliot@ubuntu-linux:~$ date > mydate.txt

As you can see, there is no output displayed on your screen! That's because the output got redirected to the file mydate.txt:

elliot@ubuntu-linux:~$ cat mydate.txt 
Sat May 11 06:04:49 CST 2019

Cool! Let's try some more examples. You can print a line on your terminal with the echo command:

elliot@ubuntu-linux:~$ echo "Mars is a planet." 
Mars is a planet.

If you want to redirect the output to a file named planets.txt, you can run the command:

elliot@ubuntu-linux:~$ echo "Mars is a planet." > planets.txt 
elliot@ubuntu-linux:~$ cat planets.txt
Mars is a planet

Awesome! Notice that the file planets.txt was also...