i'm trying to get the following search to give me the answer and at the same time discard any error messages.
the directory is a mount point of a device in limbo. it is showing up as mounted but it really isn't (the device is turned off). mtab says: fusectl /sys/fs/fuse/connections fusectl rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime 0 0 /dev/sdc1 /mb ext4 rw,relatime 0 0 gphotofs /home/me/pics/camera fuse.gphotofs rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,user_id=1000,group_id=1000 0 0 (more on this mount/fuser stuff as a different question) the directory is empty as it should be but even a simple ls gives me the protocol error, but at least the redirect functions as expected. $ ls ls: reading directory '.': Protocol error $ ls 2>/dev/null total 0 $ find . -type f -exec printf %.0s. {} + | wc -m find: ‘.’: Protocol error 0 $ find . -type f -exec printf %.0s. {} + | wc -m 2>/dev/null find: ‘.’: Protocol error 0 # at least this one does what i tell it to do... $ find . -type f -exec printf %.0s. {} + | wc -m >/dev/null find: ‘.’: Protocol error even if i try to wrap it up in a command or subshell it still gives me the error message and i don't really care. i just want the answer to be 0 or the number of files. i am using the above in a bash script so i don't want any error messages coming from the script itself unless i print them myself. thanks! :) songbird