How do I conditionally redirect the output of a command to /dev/null?

Question

I have a script. I would like to give this script a quiet mode and a verbose mode.

This is the equivalent of:

if $verbose
then
  redirect=\"> /dev         


        

Answer 1

Consider whether it would be worth setting set -x for detailed logging to stderr in verbose mode. If that's so, then verbose-only output can be achieved with a no-op : like this.

while getopts "v" o
do case "$o" in
   v) set -x;;
   esac
done

echo "This will always be output"           # goes to stdout
: this will only be output in verbose mode  # goes to stderr

: evaluates it's arguments but does nothing with them. set -x will show what was evaluated on stderr as each statement is executed.

It also lets you split verbose and standard logs by stream.

Might not be what you need here, but it can be a handy trick.