Hi when I grep a log file e.g

grep pattern /var/log/something

I get the full line of text line for line.

Now if I do

grep pattern /var/log/something > outputFile

The lines in the output are truncated there are words in the middle missing.

Any idea why redirecting the output to a file truncates the output?

I tried the following as well and this didn't work either:

grep pattern /var/log/something 2>&1 > outputFile

and if I do

grep -C 1 pattern /var/log/something > outputFile

I get more than I want in the file although it does include what I need.

Any ideas?

Interesting.
What distro+release?
What grep version?
Do you use a grep alias?
Bash completion?
Modified IFS?
Any characteristics missing words share?
Can you give an example of an output line and mark where word or words are missing?

Sorry everyone please ignore my original post!


Turns out that the developers had turned on a more verbose output on the log only recently so not all the log had the same detail.

When greping without an output file I would see the bottom of the log where the verbose information was. When greping to a file and opening it in vi I would see the top of the file where the verbose output wasn't there. Of course if I had bothered to scroll down half way the verbose logging would have appeared.

I'm really sorry for waisting anyone's time!

NP, at least thanks for posting who the culprits are...