To read from an input file instead of typing the input in.
$ program < input
To send the output to an output file, this is hard to figure out if the program is interactive, since the prompts go to the output file.
$ program > output
To append the output to an output file
$ program >> output
Read the input from the input file, put the output to the output file.
$ program < input > output
Some programs output data to stderr not stdout ( the compiler is an example ). If you want to capture the compiler warnings in a text file try this.
$ g++ program.cpp >& file.txt
This puts the output to standard out and the output file, allowing you to see and store your output at the same time. The "|" is called a pipe, and it pipes the output of your program to another program. The other program will treat the input as if it came from stdin ( the keyboard/terminal ). In this case the output from "program" is read as input by the program "tee" ( tee puts all of the input to the screen and to a file ).
$ program | tee output
Read the input from the input file, put the output to the output file, and put output to standard out.
$ program < input | tee output
