> /dev/null

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

hello all,

In many shell scripts i found '> /dev/null' , i am not able to get this,
will any one please explain why we are using this.

thanks
sudha

2

Hi,

In Unix-like operating systems, "/dev/null" or "the null device" is a special file that discards all data written to it, and provides no data to any process that reads from it (it returns EOF).

The null device is typically used for disposing of unwanted output streams of a process, or as a convenient empty file for input streams. This is usually done by redirection.

Best Regards,
Sridhar M

3

thanks a lot sridhar