I have a bash script which calls several long-running processes.  I want to capture the output of those calls into variables for processing reasons.  However, because these are long running processes, I would like the output of the rsync calls to be displayed in the console in *real-time* and not after the fact.

To this end, I have [found][1] a way of doing it but it relies on outputting the text to /dev/stderr.  I feel that outputting to /dev/stderr is not a good way of doing things.

    VAR1=$(for i in {1..5}; do sleep 1; echo $i; done | tee /dev/stderr)

    VAR2=$(rsync -r -t --out-format=&#39;%n%L&#39; --delete -s /path/source1/ /path/target1 | tee /dev/stderr)

    VAR3=$(rsync -r -t --out-format=&#39;%n%L&#39; --delete -s /path/source2/ /path/target2 | tee /dev/stderr)

In the example above, I am calling rsync a few times and I want to see the file names as they are processed, but in the end I still want the output in a variable because I will be parsing it later.

Is there a &#39;cleaner&#39; way of accomplishing this? 

If it makes a difference, I am using Ubuntu 12.04, bash 4.2.24.


  [1]: http://sebthom.de/158-bash-capturing-stderr-variable/

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Capture stdout to a variable but still display it in the console