How it works...

The redirection operators (> and >>) send output to a file instead of the terminal. The > and >> operators behave slightly differently. Both redirect output to a file, but the single greater-than symbol (>) empties the file and then writes to it, whereas the double greater-than symbol (>>) adds the output to the end of the existing file.

By default, the redirection operates on standard output. To explicitly take a specific file descriptor, you must prefix the descriptor number to the operator.

The > operator is equivalent to 1> and similarly it applies for >> (equivalent to 1>>).

When working with errors, the stderr output is dumped to the /dev/null file. The ./dev/null file is a special device file where any data received by the file is discarded. The null device is often known as a black hole, as all the data that goes into it is lost forever.