shell standard streams redirection order OR 2>&1 1>/dev/null vs 1>/dev/null 2>&1

Question

Can somebody please clarify differences? Is some of those considered as best practice? If I remember correct I somehow on SO read that this 1>/dev/null should precede this: 2>&1

ls -al /doesNotExists 2>&1 1>/dev/null
ls -al /doesNotExists 1>/dev/null 2>&1

ls -al /doesNotExists 1>&2 2>/dev/null
ls -al /doesNotExists 2>/dev/null 1>&2

ls -la /doesNotExists 2<&1 1>/dev/null
ls -la /doesNotExists 2<&1 2>/dev/null

ls -la /doesNotExists 1<&2 1>/dev/null
ls -la /doesNotExists 1<&2 2>/dev/null

ls -la /doesNotExists 1>/dev/null 2<&1
ls -la /doesNotExists 2>/dev/null 2<&1

ls -la /doesNotExists 1>/dev/null 1<&2
ls -la /doesNotExists 2>/dev/null 1<&2

Answer 1

shell standard streams redirection order

The order matters as the outcome is different. Take your first example:

ls -al /doesNotExists 2>&1 1>/dev/null

This directs only standard output to nul, because the standard error was duplicated to standard output before standard output was redirected to dirlist.

ls -al /doesNotExists 1>/dev/null 2>&1

This directs both standard output and standard error to nul.

---

Bash Reference Manual: Redirections

Note that the order of redirections is significant. For example, the command

ls > dirlist 2>&1

directs both standard output (file descriptor 1) and standard error (file descriptor 2) to the file dirlist, while the command

ls 2>&1 > dirlist

directs only the standard output to file dirlist, because the standard error was made a copy of the standard output before the standard output was redirected to dirlist.

Source Bash Reference Manual: Redirections

---

Tutorial

There is a nice illustrated tutorial at Illustrated Redirection Tutorial which makes this easier to understand:

Order Of Redirection, i.e., "> file 2>&1" vs. "2>&1 >file"

While it doesn't matter where the redirections appears on the command line, their order does matter. They are setup from left to right.

2>&1 >file

A common error, is to do command 2>&1 > file to redirect both stderr and stdout to file. Let's see what's going on. First we type the command in our typical terminal, the descriptors look like this:

                  ---       +-----------------------+
standard input   ( 0 ) ---->| /dev/pts/5            |
                  ---       +-----------------------+

                  ---       +-----------------------+
standard output  ( 1 ) ---->| /dev/pts/5            |
                  ---       +-----------------------+

                  ---       +-----------------------+
standard error   ( 2 ) ---->| /dev/pts/5            |
                  ---       +-----------------------+

Then our shell, Bash sees 2>&1 so it duplicates 1, and the file descriptor look like this:

                  ---       +-----------------------+
standard input   ( 0 ) ---->| /dev/pts/5            |
                  ---       +-----------------------+

                  ---       +-----------------------+
standard output  ( 1 ) ---->| /dev/pts/5            |
                  ---       +-----------------------+

                  ---       +-----------------------+
standard error   ( 2 ) ---->| /dev/pts/5            |
                  ---       +-----------------------+

That's right, nothing has changed, 2 was already pointing to the same place as 1. Now Bash sees > file and thus changes stdout:

                  ---       +-----------------------+
standard input   ( 0 ) ---->| /dev/pts/5            |
                  ---       +-----------------------+

                  ---       +-----------------------+
standard output  ( 1 ) ---->| file                  |
                  ---       +-----------------------+

                  ---       +-----------------------+
standard error   ( 2 ) ---->| /dev/pts/5            |
                  ---       +-----------------------+

And that's not what we want.

>file 2>&1

Now let's look at the correct command >file 2>&1. We start as in the previous example, and Bash sees > file:

                  ---       +-----------------------+
standard input   ( 0 ) ---->| /dev/pts/5            |
                  ---       +-----------------------+

                  ---       +-----------------------+
standard output  ( 1 ) ---->| file                  |
                  ---       +-----------------------+

                  ---       +-----------------------+
standard error   ( 2 ) ---->| /dev/pts/5            |
                  ---       +-----------------------+

Then it sees our duplication 2>&1:

                  ---       +-----------------------+
standard input   ( 0 ) ---->| /dev/pts/5            |
                  ---       +-----------------------+

                  ---       +-----------------------+
standard output  ( 1 ) ---->| file                  |
                  ---       +-----------------------+

                  ---       +-----------------------+
standard error   ( 2 ) ---->| file                  |
                  ---       +-----------------------+

And voila, both 1 and 2 are redirected to file.