TEE(1)

💅 TEE(1) — the one where your output gets duplicated

okay so bestie, this page comes straight out of the General Commands Manual and it's about tee, which is genuinely one of the most underrated little icons in your toolbox. she takes what you pipe into her, copies it into every FILE you name, and also lets it spill out to standard output at the same time. main character energy, honestly — she refuses to choose. 🫶

---

✨ NAME ✨

tee — Copy standard input to each FILE, and also to standard output.

no cap, that's the whole job description and she's thriving. 🌈

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

tee [OPTION]... [FILE]...

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

Copy standard input to each FILE, and also to standard output.

that's it. that's the vibe. you feed her something on stdin, she fans it out to every FILE you listed, and still passes it along to stdout so the rest of your pipeline doesn't get abandoned mid-conversation. literal queen behaviour — everyone gets a copy, nobody gets left on read. 💅✨

🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

• -h, --help — print help. the "what do I even do" button, we've all been there bestie 🫶
• -a, --append — append to the given FILEs, do not overwrite. so nothing you already had gets deleted — she adds to the end instead of steamrolling it. use this one, seriously, protect your data 🙈
• -i, --ignore-interrupts — ignore interrupt signals. note that this is ignored on non-Unix platforms — so on those platforms the flag just kinda sits there being decorative 🎀
• -p — set write error behavior. also ignored on non-Unix platforms. that's the entire description, she's mysterious like that 💀
• --output-error — set write error behavior. the actual flavour of that behaviour is picked from these possible values:
  • warn — produce warnings for errors writing to any output
  • warn-nopipe — produce warnings for errors that are not pipe errors (ignored on non-unix platforms)
  • exit — exit on write errors to any output
  • exit-nopipe — exit on write errors to any output that are not pipe errors (equivalent to exit on non-unix platforms)
• -V, --version — print version. the classic "wait, which build am I even on" moment ⭐
• [file] — yep, the file argument, listed right here in the middle of the options like she owns the place. she does. 👑

💖 EXTRA 💖

If a FILE is -, it refers to a file named -.

okay so this is the part where you go "wait, isn't - normally stdout?" — and I hear you, but read it again bestie: a FILE of - here means an actual literal file whose name is -. do not assume the usual magic dash behaviour, she's not doing that on this page. write it down, put it on the fridge. 🧚

👑 VERSION 👑

v(uutils coreutils) 0.12.0

---

fr fr, the only thing dangerous here is tee without -a — that overwrites, and overwriting is how you lose a file you loved. 💀

okay that's the page!! go pipe something into her, she's obsessed with you already 🦋🍓💜

signing off with the deets: this was v(uutils coreutils) 0.12.0, dated 2026-09-17 — mwah, catch you in the next manpage 💋🎀