ptee(1)

💖 ptee — the manual page, but make it a group chat 💖

okay so bestie, you found the ptee(1) page. it's a User Commands girlie, and she's literally the piped version of tee(1). let's get into it 🫶

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✨ NAME ✨

ptee — piped tee: read from one file descriptor and copy to many 🌈

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🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

ptee [-h] [-r infd] outfd1 [outfd2 ...]

that's the whole vibe. one input, a whole squad of outputs. 💅

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so here's the tea: ptee reads from one file descriptor — that's 0 / stdin by default, no cap — and then copies literally everything it reads to all the output file descriptors you hand it. all of them. every single one. it's giving "one message, many group chats." 👑

she's a piped version of tee(1), which is the whole point. tee(1) is great but she's out here working with files and pipes in a specific way, and ptee is the version that just speaks file descriptor. iykyk.

and here's the iconic part: you can use ptee together with pipexec(1) to fit the output of one command into many other commands. one command's output, fanned out to a bunch of other commands. no middleman. no temp files. we love a direct line. 💖

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💅 OPTIONS 💅

• -h — prints help and version information. the "hey bestie, what are you" flag. 🎀
• -r infd — use the given infd as the input file descriptor. if you don't specify this one, 0 (stdin) gets used by default. simple as that. ✨

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🔥 EXAMPLES 🔥

duplicating to a whole crew

want to duplicate all data from stdin to stdout, stderr and fd 7? say less:

ptee 1 2 7

the tee equivalent moment

the command

tee output.txt

is equivalent to the shell command

ptee 5 5>output.txt

same energy, different fit. 👑

the pipexec(1) collab 🤝

okay this one is the main character. using pipexec(1): count all files in the file system and additionally count only those that have a uppercase 'A' in their name. and listen — the file system will be scanned only once. no temporary files are generated. not a single one. efficiency queen. 💜

pipexec [ LS /bin/ls -R / ] [ PTEE /usr/bin/ptee 3 4 ] \
  [ WC1 /usr/bin/wc -l ] [ GREP /bin/grep A ] \
  [ WC2 /usr/bin/wc -l ] "{LS:1>PTEE:0}" "{PTEE:3>WC1:0}" \
  "{PTEE:4>GREP:0}" "{GREP:1>WC2:0}"

look at that wiring. LS into PTEE, PTEE out to WC1 and GREP, GREP into WC2. gorgeous. no notes. 🌸

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🌟 SEE ALSO 🌟

pipexec(1), peet(1), tee(1) — go read the family, they're all icons. 🧚

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👑 AUTHOR 👑

Written by Andreas Florath (andreas@florath.net). legend behavior, honestly. 💖

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📜 COPYRIGHT 📜

Copyright © 2015 by Andreas Florath (andreas@florath.net). License GPLv2+: GNU GPL version 2 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.

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real talk: this page came from the User Commands section, dated 2015-03-14, and that's the whole thing bestie — ptee(1), read once, copy everywhere, no temp files, periodt. 💅✨🦋