Jonathan Matthews <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Ok - can someone explain the following: > > [EMAIL PROTECTED]:/tmp$ ls > [EMAIL PROTECTED]:/tmp$ rm abc > rm: cannot remove `abc': No such file or directory > [EMAIL PROTECTED]:/tmp$ rm abc 2>err
(You could also 'rm abc 2>/dev/null', if you just wanted to discard stderr.) > [EMAIL PROTECTED]:/tmp$ cat err > rm: cannot remove `abc': No such file or directory > [EMAIL PROTECTED]:/tmp$ rm err > [EMAIL PROTECTED]:/tmp$ rm abc 2>&1 > err > rm: cannot remove `abc': No such file or directory > [EMAIL PROTECTED]:/tmp$ rm abc 2>&1 > /dev/null > rm: cannot remove `abc': No such file or directory Redirections are handled left-to-right: rm abc 1->(stdout) 2->(stderr) 2>&1 1->(stdout) 2->(stdout) >/dev/null 1->/dev/null 2->(stdout) with the result being that error messages are printed to wherever stdout went before, and stdout is discarded. Instead, you might try rm abc >/dev/null 2>&1 -- David Maze [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://people.debian.org/~dmaze/ "Theoretical politics is interesting. Politicking should be illegal." -- Abra Mitchell
