How to ignore error messages in bash on Ubuntu?

Question

I'm trying to show the number of lines, words and characters of all configuration files in /etc/*conf (with command wc).

How can I modify the command (or commandline) to not view the error messages?

If Roy's answer below doesn't provide what you want, could you provide the command you're trying so we can get an idea of what's not working properly? — Jonathan Heady, Mar 25 '10 at 22:46

score 26 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 25 '10 at 23:33

26

wc /etc/*conf 2>/dev/null

answered Mar 25 '10 at 23:33

Dennis Williamson

score 4 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 25 '10 at 22:39

4

i don't have access to a shell right now, but you can try something like

cat /etc/*.conf 2> /dev/null | wc -l

That should redirect all the errors and leave the output to be passed to wc

answered Mar 25 '10 at 22:39

Roy Rico

this won't allow *wc* to output word/line/char counts per-file, if that's what the OP wants. it will get the *total* of all `/etc/*conf` files. – quack quixote Mar 25 '10 at 23:30

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered May 01 '13 at 07:10

Usually just redirect the standard output to /dev/null to ignore the output, but this is not good practice when writing shell scripts

Try use -q instead to run the shell in quite mode, which will produce less output.

This might not be relevant to the question, but just FYI.

3 Answers3