UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

The question is: Create a file called big.lst with the contents being all the files that you (rmoore) own on the network. The instructor advised as such:
$ find / -user rmoore -print > big.lst 2 > error.txt&
this command would find all files owned by rmoore and redirect output to a file called big.lst and direct errors to error.txt. The ampersand would stop error cycling time and return to the prompt. This didn't work. Any ideas?

try the command line the other way round:

find / -user rmoore -print 2> error.txt > big.lst &

I think you misunderstood your instructor with respect to the ampersand.

That "find" command you typed is going to run for several minutes. And until it finds some files owned by you, it won't look like it is doing anything. Without the ampersand, you would just have to wait until the "find" command finished. But add that ampersand, and the shell will put the job in the background and give you a new prompt immediately. That probably happened and you didn't realize that the command was still running. I'll bet the file names showed up in the output file by now.