Thursday, 27 April 2023

Unix - redirecting output to /dev/null

In the past, I've used redirection to send output to /dev/null such as: -

foobar 2> /dev/null

where foobar is a non-existent command/binary, but I want the error output ( stderr ) such as: -

zsh: command not found: foobar

or: -

foobar: command not found

to be "hidden"

Similarly, I've used redirection to send "pukka" output ( stdout ) to also go to /dev/null e.g. : -

uptime 1> /dev/null

However, I'd not seen the simple way to do both in one fell swoop: -

foobar &> /dev/null

uptime &> /dev/null

where the ampersand ( & ) is used to send BOTH stdout and stderr to /dev/null

As ever, which is nice

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