Redirect stdout over ssh

Question

I would like to run

something > file

on a remote system through ssh, but if I run

ssh host something > file

the redirection is executed locally as ssh etc > file

I've tried it with ' or '' or dd or with a pipe | instead, but I can't get it to work. How can this be done?

Answer 1

Try:

ssh host 'something > file'

Here's a contrived demonstration of a way to handle redirection, pipes and quotes:

ssh host date -d yesterday \| awk "'{print $1}'" \> 'file" "with\ spaces.out'

The pipe and redirection are escaped rather than being contained in an overall outer set of quotes, reducing the need to escape one level of quotes. The single quotes for the AWK command are protected by the double quotes that surround them. The filename could be protected in the same way, but here I show how the single quotes protect the double quotes and the escape.

Answer 2

Even simpler, instead of:

ssh host something > file

do:

ssh host "something > file"

Answer 3

The suggested solution works with pipes as well

ssh host 'some_command | some_other_command'