Siblings have already responded to this well, so I'll just add an example: $ ls x ls: cannot access x: No such file or directory $ ls x >/dev/null 2>&1

Siblings have already responded to this well, so I'll just add an example: $ ls x ls: cannot access x: No such file or directory $ ls x >/dev/null 2>&1 $ ls x 2>&1 >/dev/null ls: cannot access x: No such file or directory The first command shows us trying to list a non-existent file, raising an error. The second sends stderr to stdout before sending stdout to null, suppressing all output. The third sends the error to stdout; any output on stdout would have been suppressed (can you come up with a way to verify this?)