I know that the > sign is used for output redirection in the command line, but I'm having trouble finding something that explains the use of 2>&1 in the command line. For example:
curl > /dev/null 2>&1 &
4 Answers
The 1 denotes standard output (stdout). The 2 denotes standard error (stderr).
So 2>&1 says to send standard error to where ever standard output is being redirected as well. Which since it's being sent to /dev/null is akin to ignoring any output at all.
tl;dr
Fetch in the background and discard both the stdout and stderr.
curl > /dev/null 2>&1 &
is the same as
curl > /dev/null 2>/dev/null &
