In this chapter, we'll explain a very important aspect of Bash: redirection. We'll start by describing the different types of input and output redirections, and how they are related to Linux file descriptors. After the basics of redirection are covered, we will continue with some advanced uses.

Next up are pipes, which is a concept used heavily within shell scripting. We present a few practical examples of pipes. Finally, we show how here documents work, which also have some great uses.

The following commands will be introduced in this chapter: diff, gcc, fallocate, tr, chpasswd, tee, and bc.

The following topics will be covered in this chapter:

• Input/output redirection
• Pipes
• Here documents