I just noticed on my N900 keyboard that >,<, ^, %, |, {, }, [, ] and $ characters are missing. I was going to pipe command text responds into a file and found that > is missing.

Is there any way of using these characters on the N900 from the keyboard? Is there a particular sequence to access any of the missing characters? or a way to pipe an output of a command into a file?

Press the Blue Arrow button on the keyboard (halfway up the left-hand side on a UK model at least), then Ctrl, and an on-screen menu will pop up with the characters you're looking for.

press the blue arrow + ctrl to bring up additional charachters onscreen

There is a blue arrow in the first place of the second row. It is called the 'Fn' key. If you press it and another button, the blue symbol on that button will appear.
You will notice there is a blue "Sym" caption on the Ctrl button (top-left). If you press the blue arrow and the Ctrl, you will press "Sym", which will bring up a handful of useful symbols and characters. (All of which you were referring to.)

You can use an app called "Keyboard Mod", or "ukeyboard", to modify either the Sym, or the normal virtual keyboard.

There is a page in the wiki about changing the hardware keyboard layout as well, however it is quite dangerous and can make your N900 dead in a matter of minutes if you make it wrong.

or you can also reconfigure the keyboard for quick access.

I have putten the | sign on blue shift-backspace. This will make it a bit tricky to erase numbers in a number field, as you then have to press something like shift-backspace to do so, but it does the trick for me.

by changing the file:

/usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/nokia_vndr/rx-51

Goto ( roughly line ~422) under xkb_symbols "english_base" and
change the line with <BKSP> to:

key <BKSP> { [ BackSpace, BackSpace, BackSpace, bar , BackSpace ] };

BEWARE, I have been told configuring this file badly may brick your phone.

It bricked mine the first time I tried.
However, a simple reflash solved it.

(Making a backup with the Backup application is strongly recommended.)

Actually, this would MOST CERTAINLY BRICK the device...
Correcting:

key <BKSP> { [ BackSpace, BackSpace, bar , bar ] };

FN key + CTRL = all missing functions on the qwerty keyboard

Thanks for all the replies.
I was not getting that menu originally as I pressed both together at the same time and wondering why ain't this working as it should.

By Pressing the Blue arrow and release, then pressed the ctrl button the extra characters are displayed for both Xterinal and other text input applications.

Again thanks for your replies.

This is correct.
However, that's not what you wrote in your previous post. (In your previous post, there is an extra ", Backspace".)

Read it again, please.

i updated my maemo 5 on 25th may, after the update the touch screen keyboard layout changed & the keys in the touch screen shrunk & now it pretty difficult to use the on screen keyboard, is there a way 2 get my old touch screen keyboard layout back?