Editing Linux 101 hacks (section)

=='''Hack 19. Suppress Standard Output and Error'''==


'''Message'''


Sometime while debugging a shell script, you may not want to see either the standard output or standard error message. Use /dev/null as shown below for suppressing the output.


'''Suppress standard output using > /dev/null'''


This will be very helpful when you are debugging shell scripts, where you don’t want to display the echo statement and interested in only looking at the error messages.


# cat file.txt > /dev/null 

# ./shell-script.sh > /dev/null 

'''Suppress standard error using 2> /dev/null'''


This is also helpful when you are interested in viewing only the standard output and don’t want to view the error messages.


# cat invalid-file-name.txt 2> /dev/null 

# ./shell-script.sh 2> /dev/null