how to redirect a output of a command to two files

Question

i need to redirect a output of a command to two files say file1 and file2 file1 is a new file and file2 is already existing file where i need to append the output i have tried

This is not giving the expected results:

command > file1 > file2

Answer 1

You are looking for the tee command.

$ echo existing >file2
$ date | tee file1 >> file2
$ cat file2
existing
Mon Mar  9 10:40:01 CET 2009
$ cat file1
Mon Mar  9 10:40:01 CET 2009
$