Shell: redirect stdout to /dev/null and stderr to stdout [duplicate]

Answer 1

Well, that's because you can't. STDOUT and STDERR are just two files, represented by file descriptors, which are just integers, specifically 1 and 2.

What you're asking is to set descriptor 2 to /dev/null, then set descriptor 3 to the same file descriptor 2 and have that output go somewhere else.

Answer 2

How about this:

./script 3>&1 1>/dev/null 2>&3 | ./other-script

The idea is to "backup" stdout descriptor, close the original stdout and then redirect strerr to saved stdout.

Its much similar to the solution provided by geirha, but its more explicit (bash coding can easily become very obscured).

Answer 3

You want

./script 2>&1 1>/dev/null | ./other-script

The order here is important. Let's assume stdin (fd 0), stdout (fd 1) and stderr (fd 2) are all connected to a tty initially, so

0: /dev/tty, 1: /dev/tty, 2: /dev/tty

The first thing that gets set up is the pipe. other-script's stdin gets connected to the pipe, and script's stdout gets connected to the pipe, so script's file descriptors so far look like:

0: /dev/tty, 1: pipe, 2: /dev/tty

Next, the redirections occur, from left to right. 2>&1 makes fd 2 go wherever fd 1 is currently going, which is the pipe.

0: /dev/tty, 1: pipe, 2: pipe

Lastly, 1>/dev/null redirects fd1 to /dev/null

0: /dev/tty, 1: /dev/null, 2: pipe

End result, script's stdout is silenced, and its stderr is sent through the pipe, which ends up in other-script's stdin.

Also see http://bash-hackers.org/wiki/doku.php/howto/redirection_tutorial

Also note that 1>/dev/null is synonymous to, but more explicit than >/dev/null