Which symbol is used to redirect the output of the preceding command to another destination?

• A. The ampersand &
• B. The pipe symbol |
• C. The asterisk *
• D. The percent %

Answer: (B)

The idea being tested is how you connect commands so the output from one becomes the input for another. The pipe symbol is used for this in most shells. When you place a pipe between two commands, the first command writes its results to standard output, and the shell connects that stream to the standard input of the next command, letting you process data in stages without saving intermediate results to a file.

For example, something like listing files and filtering them can be done by piping the output of the first command into a second command that searches for what you want.

Other symbols do different things: the ampersand runs a command in the background; the asterisk is a wildcard that matches multiple filenames; the percent sign has other uses such as variable expansion or job control in some environments, not for routing a command’s output to another destination.