The append symbol is another name for the greater than ( > ) symbol when referring to a command in a command line environment (e.g., MS-DOS or Linux).

In the example below, the append symbol is between the dir command and the output file that stores the output.

dir > dirout.txt

In this example, instead of displaying the dir command to the screen, all output is stored in the dirout.txt file. In Linux, you can replace the dir command with the ls command to achieve the same results.

In the following example, the command appends “this is an example” to the end of the test.txt file using echo and two append symbols next to each other.

The append symbol can be used with most commands, and executable file or batch file that outputs information to the screen.

echo this is an example » test.txt

Append, Greater than, Software terms, Symbol

  • How to print a listing of files in a directory.
  • MS-DOS and Windows command line tips.
  • Unix and Linux commands help.