function GetInput
{
print -n "Input"
read input
export INPUT=$input
}
export COMMAND="GetInput"

$COMMAND
echo "$INPUT"

$COMMAND | tee -a Log.log
echo "$INPUT"

The first one without "tee" works fine. echo "$INPUT" displays the values I type in for input. The second one always shows $INPUT as empty string. Why? Is there any other way to execute a shell function and capture its log output and at the same time display its output on the stdout device too without impacting its actual behavior? As you can see here, although the fucntion exports the variable INPUT, it is not available when the function call returns to the calling script code.

Thanks for any help
Hoping to ===>

function GetInput
{
    print -n "Input"
    read input
    export INPUT=$input
}

Code: export COMMAND="GetInput" $COMMAND echo "$INPUT" $COMMAND | tee -a Log.log echo "$INPUT" The first one without "tee" works fine. echo "$INPUT" displays the values I type in for input. The second one always shows $INPUT as empty string. Why?[/code]

[code] Is there any other way to execute a shell function and capture its log output and at the same time display its output on the stdout device too without impacting its actual behavior? As you can see here, although the fucntion exports the variable INPUT, it is not available when the function call returns to the calling script code.

Your comment "all commands except the last are executed in a sub-shell" explains the behavior, which is what I though though was not sure. What exactly is the "last one", the tee command itself, the rightmost one I guess? In my context, the command which I run and pipe the output to using tee is a "shell function" defined within the script - not a script different from the one that calls it. Usually functions run in the same shell as the one in which the script calling them runs. Including pipe seems to make a difference ot the bahavior. Thanks anyway for your time and effort in responding.

Is there an alternative to "tee" with "pipeline" to capture outputs and at the same time view on the stdout device? Thanks again for the clear explanation, helped me a lot.