[mania]

so this works

Code:
su
cat >> /etc/hosts

and this works

Code:
sudo pico /etc/hosts

but this throws a permission denied?!

Code:
sudo cat >> /etc/hosts

What gives?

[mania]

I will add that what I am trying to do is add a line to the end of the file using a script, so going into su and/or pico isn't what i want. if there is another way that works better let me know and many thanks.

[Tesseract]

Did you mean that

Code:
sudo cat >> /etc/hosts

didn't work?

If so, that's because the redirection is handled by the shell, and the shell's privileges are not altered by sudo. You can get around this problem by performing the redirection 'inside' the sudo process:

Code:
sudo sh -c 'cat >> /etc/hosts'