Tips 'n' Tricks » GNU/Linux Command Line Tips » Redirection of command output to the bit bucket
Redirection of command output to the bit bucket
On a GNU/Linux system there are 3 standard sources for input and output called:
STDIN (Standard IN) = keyboard by default
STDOUT (Standard OUT) = screen by default
STDERR (Standard ERROR) = screen by default
These can be referred to by the numbers:
0 = STDIN
1 = STDOUT
2 = STDERR
To redirect the output of a program to /dev/null use the > redirector
wobble > /dev/null
This will redirect the information from the wobble program away from the screen to the null device; /dev/null.
However this does not redirect the errors, they would still be output to the screen. To also redirect errors we must:
wobble > /dev/null 2>&1
What this does is redirect STDOUT to /dev/null and it also redirects STDERR (2) to wherever STDOUT (1) is going, currently /dev/null.
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