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Does Windows provide the basic tee facility for copying standard input to an arbitrary set of files and then back out to standard output?

I generally download a generic tee program, but curious if something like this exists in powershell or something like that?

Jé Queue
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    PowerShell is not for everyone so many will prefer to just download tee from http://unxutils.sourceforge.net/ – sorin May 05 '10 at 21:47
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    What about cmd? I mean w/o downloading external tools is there a way to display the output of a program and write it into a file at the same time? – Nils Mar 07 '12 at 13:43
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    powershell is for everyone from Vista and up – phuclv Mar 18 '16 at 03:52
  • @phuclv, well except for anyone working in a corporation that just locks up the entire powershell functionality, which is almost all of them – Shodan Apr 05 '23 at 06:28
  • @Shodan no most companies I know do not lock powershell at all. They may lock the ability to run powershell scripts but there's no way to completely prevent users from using powershell as an interactive tool – phuclv Apr 07 '23 at 18:21

3 Answers3

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PowerShell sure does, the cmdlet is called Tee-Object. You can also use the alias tee if you're more used to the Unix-like approach:

PS C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator> help Tee-Object

NAME
    Tee-Object

SYNOPSIS
    Saves command output in a file or variable and displays it in the console.

example:

C:>get-process | tee -filepath C:\file.txt

this will send the output to C:\file.txt as well as the console.

John T
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  • There are also numerous ports of the original `tee` to Windows, but those can be easily found by one's favorite Internet search engine. – Joey Nov 23 '09 at 08:39
  • Right, actually I "carry" a zip file with me from environment to environment; tee being part of that toolkit, but just a fundamentally useful facility I was thinking just HAD to be part of Windows somewhere. – Jé Queue Nov 23 '09 at 16:06
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    The powershell tee isn't quite identical to the "UNIX / GNU" tee you are familiar with. I would very much recommend carrying around the UnxUtils with you and invoking them in this case. – Goyuix Jan 04 '10 at 22:38
  • Thanks @joey, having ended up on this page while searching for tee for windows on a search engine – Shodan Apr 05 '23 at 06:29
  • I can get it to work with some commands, but not with others. Weird... – Fabio says Reinstate Monica May 04 '23 at 17:00
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I just found a way to use the perl as alternative, e.g.:

CMD1 | perl -ne "print $_; print STDERR $_;" 2> OUTPUT.TEE
pegasus
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0

Native port of tee for Windows also exists, for example:

https://github.com/dEajL3kA/tee-win32/tree/master#tee-for-windows

lirisa8564
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