Node.js command line arguments “<” and “>”

Question

I have a test.js file with the following content:

let i = ''
process.stdin.on('data', (c) => (i += c))
process.stdin.on('end', () => {
  const { EOL } = require('os')
  const lines = i.split(EOL) 
  console.log(lines)
})

I figured out that when I run this line bellow I read from input.txt and output to output.txt . Everything works just fine.

node test.js < input.txt > output.txt

However, I cannot find any info in node.js official docs about command line arguments like < and > . Am I looking in a wrong place? Is there somewhere a full list of possible arguments of this type and how to use them? Thanks.

Answer 1

< and > are not command line arguments to node . Rather, in most shells, they are part of a feature known as I/O Redirection , which you can use to redirect the input and output of a program. According to the link above:

Redirection simply means capturing output from a file, command, program, script, or even code block within a script and sending it as input to another file, command, program, or script.

If you would like more information about actual command line arguments you can pass to node , you can run node --help or visit the official docs .