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For example, sometimes there are two errors being thrown by a program, but the error logs are lost somewhere in between hundreds of information message logs. Hence, we have the last part of the command.

Have a question or suggestion? Please leave a comment to start the discussion. If not specified, bash will use stdout by default. Now, using the redirection, we can get a clearer output. The output looks much better, right? How do we do that? In certain situations, the output may not be useful at all. Using redirection, we can dump all the output into the void.

If you tend to forget the file descriptor of stdout and stderr , the following command will do just fine. This is an interesting one. Learn more. Asked 7 years, 4 months ago. Active 4 years, 5 months ago. Viewed k times. Improve this question. Eliah Kagan k 51 51 gold badges silver badges bronze badges.

I see 1 problem with this: the 2nd and 3rd line ONLY work with running as root. Otherwise you need sudo in front of it. Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. If file doesn't exist, it is created as a regular file. If file already exists as a regular file and is non-empty, it is overwritten.

If file already exists as a symbolic link , the link's target is used. If file already exists as a directory, you'll get an error like bash: file : Is a directory. Note that this output does not contain a newline. When you press Enter on a command prompt--whether or not you've typed anything--the shell running interactively prints a newline before running the command issued. This newline is not part of the command's output.

Improve this answer. Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. I think you want NUL , at least within a command prompt or batch files. Improve this answer. Jon Skeet Jon Skeet 1. I just looked at this again, and I retract my original statement.

I was doing the write in code, and the error was getting swallowed. I'm deleting it so no one accidentally takes it as the truth. CoDEmanX: That's not my experience. Writing to the console - or even a file - can take a significant chunk of time. I've just tested it with a program writing "Hello there" to stdout times. Redirecting to a file on an SSD took 18 seconds. Redirecting to NUL took 4 seconds.

Not redirecting at all made me give up through a lack of patience after a while I dream that maybe one day, if everybody uses the colon by convention, we will be able to deprecate the dreaded special device names :- — jdm. Show 9 more comments.