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up vote 3 down vote favorite

I run the following command:

pkg_add emacs-23.4,2.tbz 2> output.log

The output still displays in the terminal. When I press ↑, I get

pkg_add emacs-23.4,2.tbz 2 > output.log

with a space before the 2.

I did not originally put this. I try

pkg_add emacs-23.4,2.tbz > output.log 2>&1

Again, when I press ↑, spaces have been added.

Why is this happening to me?

I am running csh on FreeBSD.

share|improve this question
Are you sure you are running bash or sh? On FreeBSD csh or tcsh is often the default. – Craig Apr 4 '12 at 16:50
What does echo $SHELL show? – Karlson Apr 4 '12 at 16:51
@Craig I'm on csh. – gadgetmo Apr 4 '12 at 16:59
@Karlson I'm on csh. – gadgetmo Apr 4 '12 at 17:00
i have edited.. – gadgetmo Apr 4 '12 at 17:00

1 Answer

up vote 4 down vote accepted

The 2> redirect does not work with csh or tcsh.

Use the chsh command to change your shell to /bin/sh or /usr/local/bin/bash in order to use the 2> style redirect. Note: Do not change root's shell to /usr/local/bin/bash

csh and tcsh cannot redirect standard out and error separately, but >& will redirect the combined output to a file.

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+1 and ✔. I changed shells using sh. – gadgetmo Apr 4 '12 at 17:45
@Craig He's running pkg_add on FreeBSD, so I'm assuming this is for the root user (/bin/csh is the default for root on FreeBSD). In this case you should not change the shell to /usr/local/bin/bash. /bin/sh is acceptable. You could also just switch to another shell after logging in as root. – James O'Gorman Apr 6 '12 at 23:21
@JamesO'Gorman Good catch I updated my answer. – Craig Apr 7 '12 at 1:35

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