Redirection Operators

The Redirection operators are used in PowerShell to redirect the output from the PowerShell console to text files.

The following table shows the numbers which are used by the PowerShell redirection operators to represent the available output streams:

StreamDescriptionIntroduced in
1Success StreamPowerShell 2.0
2Error StreamPowerShell 2.0
3Warning StreamPowerShell 3.0
4Verbose StreamPowerShell 3.0
5Debug StreamPowerShell 3.0
6Information StreamPowerShell 5.0
*All StreamsPowerShell 3.0

PowerShell supports the following redirection operators:

  1. >
  2. >>
  3. >&1

>Operator

This operator is used to send the specified stream to the specified text file. The following statement is the syntax to use this operator:

Example:

The above command sends the following output of the Get-childItem cmdlet to the k.txt file.

Mode         LastWriteTime         Length      Name                                                                    ----        -------------          ------     ----                                                                    d-----       30-09-2019   05:49               images  d-----       09-10-2019   11:14               files  d-----       09-10-2019   11:56               powershell  d-----       09-10-2019   10:58               users  d-----       09-10-2019   04:37               Windows  -a----       05-11-2019   14:53      0        k.txt  -a----       25-06-2018   09:46      2179     powershell.txt  

>> Operator

This operator is used to append the specified stream to the specified text file. The following statement is the syntax to use this operator:

Example:

The above command appends the output of the get-help command to the k.txt file.

>&1 Operator

This operator is used to redirect the specified stream to the success stream. The following statement is the syntax to use this operator:

Example:

The above command is used to redirect the following output of Write-Error command to the k.txt file.

Write-Error "hello"  : hello  At line:1 char:1+ &{Write-Error "hello" }2>&1 > D:k.txt  + ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  + CategoryInfo          : NotSpecified: (:) [Write-Error], WriteErrorException  + FullyQualifiedErrorId : Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.WriteErrorException