LittleJack:

The ">" symbol tells the shell to pipe the output of the executed command (the stuff to the left) to the file named on the right.

$ ls
_README_MCM_         count_interrupts.cpp  waitable_timer.cpp
change_interval.cpp  measure_interval.cpp

$ grep c->detach *.cpp

$ ls
_README_MCM_         count_interrupts.cpp  measure_interval.cpp
change_interval.cpp  detach                waitable_timer.cpp
[download]

So in this case, you'll want to either quote the string you're searching for, or escape any special symbol that the shell will treat differently.

The bit that surprised me is that you can put the filenames to search for on the right side of the '>' symbol, I was expecting a warning or something, but as you can see above, it worked just fine and I got the 'detach' file in the directory as you indicated.

...roboticus

When your only tool is a hammer, all problems look like your thumb.

How embarrassing! Thank you for explaining that. Quoting the shell special character would have solved the problem, you're right. And the behaviour is a little strange as you say.