Command line printing

Way back in the dim and distant I could issue a command like

dir c:\documents > lpt1:

or print | dir c:\documents

from a DOS command prompt and get the output on a printer.

I'll admit I haven't tried it, but I doubt if either would work under Snow Leopard

Is there an easy way to redirect (or pipe) terminal output (generally, not just from the ls command) to the default printer, or is it easier to carry on redirecting output to a file and printing it from TextEdit?

I've tried a few man lookups, like man print, but they didn't help and I don't really know what I'm looking for

The equivalent to the DOS print command is "lpr". Try piping the output of the command to that.

man lpr gives details.

I just tried:

echo "Hello World" | lpr

and it printed as expected.

Edited by deleted (Thu 12-May-11 09:51:20)

That's the kiddie, works a treat

Thanks both.