Learn Linux Shell Scripting - Fundamentals of Bash 4.4

/dev/null

In reality, all data sent (actually, written) to /dev/null will be discarded, but nonetheless generate a write operation succeeded back to the calling command. In this case, that would be the redirection.

This is important, because look what happens when a redirection is unable to complete successfully:

reader@ubuntu:~/scripts/chapter_12$ ./stderr &> /root/file-bash: /root/file: Permission deniedreader@ubuntu:~/scripts/chapter_12$ echo $?1

This operation fails (because the reader user obviously can't write in the home directory of the root superuser).

Look at what happens when we try the same thing with /dev/null:

reader@ubuntu:~/scripts/chapter_12$ ./stderr &> /dev/null reader@ubuntu:~/scripts/chapter_12$ echo $?0reader@ubuntu:~/scripts/chapter_12$ ...