suppress shell script error messages

Question

In my shell script I got these lines:

rm tempfl.txt
rm tempfl2.txt

If these do not exist I get the error messages:

rm: temp         


        

Answer 1

We can use 2> /dev/null to suppress the output error and || true to ensure a success exit status:

rm foo
=> rm: cannot remove ‘foo’: No such file or directory

rm foo 2> /dev/null
echo $?
=> 1

rm foo 2> /dev/null || true
echo $?
=> 0

If you are using the command in a shell script, makefile, etc, maybe you need this.