Standard Error Redirection

Error Redirection

The stderr stream can be redirected in a similar fashion as stdin or stdout. There is no special symbol for redirecting stderr. The same ">" symbol is used but with the number 2 attached in front of it. We use "2>" for stderr redirection to tell the shell that we want to redirect the error messages instead of stdout (for which the file descriptor value is 0).

We tried to list a file with name xyz and the command result shows that this file does not exist.
$ ll xyz >abc
xyz not found.
We tried to redirect the output, but still the message is displayed on our screen.
$ ll xyz 2>abc
$
Now there is nothing displayed because the error message has been stored in a file with name abc.