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Minimus Heximus
Asked: 2013-05-04 13:24:38 +0800 CST

How to get and copy a too long output completely in terminal?

  • 772

In terminal a command has a too long output. But when I scroll back I see it is truncated and only the last part is shown. In Gnome-Terminal and Konsole I have this problem. In xterm there's not such problem but I cannot copy the output in xterm.

How can I get the complete output?

12.10

6 Answers

  1. You could send the output to a file: command > file.txt (where command is the command you want to run and file.txt is the file you want to save it to) and then view it with gedit file.txt.

    • 11

  2. Use xclip

    cat long.output | xclip -sel clip

    If not installed you can do

    sudo apt-get install xclip
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  3. Best Answer

    I know in the xfce4-terminal there is a option to increase the number of lines shown:

    enter image description here

    For ubuntu Terminal enter image description here

    Aside from that there is what @Zelda64fan said.

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  4. If you don't need the entire output, you could pipe it through less: command | less. This would also save the bother of having to delete the file once you've reviewed the output.

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  5. In xterm, autocopy on select should be the default. Try triple-clicking then use a middle mouse button (or emulated third button) to paste.

    The same should work with other terminals, but you need to manually copy and paste.

    There a many, many ways to do this. I like using script in some cases. Type 'script' from a command line to start it before you launch a command from the command line, then hit Ctrl-D to stop. If you don't specify a capture filename, 'typescript' is the default. Everything printed to the screen should be captured in the file.

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  6. Save console output into a file:

    1. tee command

    tee command - read from standard input and write to standard output and files.

    It automatically creates file and save, all the output of cmd ps -ax into a file named as processes_info in the same folder from where the cmd has run.

    user@admin:~$ ps -ax | tee processes_info
    1. script command

    script command - make typescript of terminal session.

    user@admin:~$ script my_console_output.txt

    This creates a file named as my_console_output.txt and will open a subshell and records all information through this session. After this, script get started and whatever the console output, it will get stored in the file my_console_output.txt; unless and until the script ends when the forked shell exits. (e.g., when the user types exit or when CTRLD is typed.)

    user@admin:~$ script -c "ps ax" processes_info.txt

    • it starts the script;

    • creates the file processes_info.txt;

    • stores the console output into the file;

    • end (close) the script.

      Other example:

       script -c 'echo "Hello, World!"' hello.txt
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