How to redirect stderr to a file for the whole pipe?

Question

I am running a command like this:

mycmd1 | mycmd2 | mycmd3 | lp

Is there a way to redirect stderr to a file for the whole pipe instead of repeating it for each command?

That is to say, I'd rather avoid doing this:

mycmd1 2>/myfile | mycmd2 2>/myfile | mycmd3 2>/myfile | lp 2>/myfile

Answer 1

Either

{ mycmd1 | mycmd2 | mycmd3 | lp; } 2>> logfile

or

( mycmd1 | mycmd2 | mycmd3 | lp ) 2>> logfile

will work. (The first version might be have a slightly faster (~1ms) startup time depending on the shell).