Redirecting custom file descriptor to subprocess

Created: — modified: — tags: bash

TL;DR: 3> >(command)

Process Substitution is nice, but rarely used Bash feature. It lets you put (in/out)put of one process in where another process expects a file.

For example (not real code):

ls | tee >(mail -s "listing" user@example.com)

lets you show output of ls command on the screen and email it at the same time.

Also, it can be used with exec:

exec >(tee ~/log)

to append all following script output to a file while printing it to the screen.

But what if you want to do it, while using a stream other then 1 (stdout)? Naive code like this

3>(command)

Will fail with a cryptic error message.

Instead, you must understand that Bash replaces the >(...) syntax with file descriptor name in the command line (try echo <(true) if you don't believe), and that full syntax for working with custom streams looks like this:

N > file

(spaces are optional, N is the number of stream / file descriptor)

So what you actually want is written at the top of this article:

3> >(command)

where 3 is the number of your stream,
first > is redirection command,
then space to distinguish it from >> "append" redirect,
and >( begins the process substitution.