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Date: Fri, 10 Oct 2003 15:42:02 -0500
From: Dan Nelson <dnelson@allantgroup.com>
To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
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References: <20031010202755.GA74202@beast.clarksys.com>
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Subject: Re: Redirect to /dev/null
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In the last episode (Oct 10), Max Clark said:
> What is the proper way to redirect output to /dev/null? I've been
> using the following in my crontab but output is still ending up in my
> mailbox.
>
> ... 2>&1 > /dev/null

I'm sure this is in a sh FAQ someplace:

What you did was dup fd1 onto fd2, then redirect fd1 to /dev/null:

        fd1 -> stdout        fd2 -> stderr
2>&1
        fd1 -> stdout        fd2 -> stdout
>/dev/null
        fd1 -> /dev/null     fd2 -> stdout

Swap the two redirects, so you redirect fd1 to /dev/null, then dup it
onto fd2:

        fd1 -> stdout        fd2 -> stderr
>/dev/null
        fd1 -> /dev/null     fd2 -> stdout
2>&1
        fd1 -> /dev/null     fd2 -> /dev/null


-- 
	Dan Nelson
	dnelson@allantgroup.com