I saw this line in a script:
DEVICE=`dialog --inputbox "Festplatten-Laufzeit auslesen. Gebe Sie das
gewünschte Device an: " 0 70 "" 3>&1 1>&2 2>&3`
What is
3>&1 1>&2 2>&3
doing? I know that 1 = stdout and 2 = stderr, but what are the 3 and the & for?
The numbers are file descriptors and only the first three (starting with zero) have a standardized meaning:
0 - stdin
1 - stdout
2 - stderr
So each of these numbers in your command refer to a file descriptor. You can either redirect a file descriptor to a file with > or redirect it to another file descriptor with >&
The 3>&1 in your command line will create a new file descriptor and redirect it to 1 which is STDOUT. Now 1>&2 will redirect the file descriptor 1 to STDERR and 2>&3 will redirect file descriptor 2 to 3 which is STDOUT.
So basically you switched STDOUT and STDERR, these are the steps:
Now if the program prints something to the file descriptor 1, it will be printed to the file descriptor 2 and vice versa.
echo "hello" | 3>&1 - would it pipe "hello" to the 3 file descriptor, and then to STDOUT?
– Lou
Dec 14 '20 at 10:04
| symbol. There is none, and it seems like Bash pipes "hello" to nowhere in that case.
– user234461
Aug 09 '21 at 08:57
echo "hello" 3>&1 do, or similar, then it pipes "hello" to STDOUT, and also directs 3 to stdout. But 3 never receive a stream so the 3>&1 has no effect. It's just like the more common 2>&1, which combines STDERR with STDOUT into a single stream on STDOUT.
– user234461
Aug 09 '21 at 09:01
It's swapping stdout and stderr.
>name means redirect output to file name.
>&number means redirect output to file descriptor number.
So the & is needed to tell the shell you mean a file descriptor, not a file name.
A file descriptor is a number that refers to an already open file. The standard ones are 0 for standard input, 1 for standard output or 2 for standard error. You can also use any other number, which will create a new file descriptor, just like when you create a new variable with var=value.
By default, both file descriptor 1 and 2 go to /dev/tty, so if you run somecommand 3>&1 1>&2 2>&3 in a new shell, it doesn't change anything (except now you have a file descriptor number 3).
But if somewhere earlier in the script it does a redirection using exec (e.g. exec 2>error.log), or the script is run with a command line including redirection (e.g. ./thescript 2>error.log), then swapping stdout and stderr will do something.
In your specific case, the command that's having its stdout and stderr swapped is dialog. Looking at its man page, I see
Some widgets, e.g., checklist, will write text to dialog's output.
Normally that is the standard error
so perhaps the person who wrote the script wants dialog's output to go to stdout instead of stderr for some reason.
See also Order of redirections
2>&1 means "redirect the content that goes to STDERR to STDOUT instead". But what it actually means is "file descriptor 2 now points to the same file as file descriptor 1". Based on my previous understanding, OP's question was confusing to me too, and the top voted answer was not helpful. Only the "Order of Redirection" link could help me understand what's happening, as it gave me the proper understanding of what 2>&1 really means. Never too late to learn! ;) Thank you!
– msb
Apr 28 '23 at 18:24
The script writer defined fd 3 such as:
exec 3<> File.txt
Open "File.txt" and assign fd 3 to it. Maximum file descriptors: 255
read -n 4 <&3
Read only 4 characters.
echo -n . >&3
Write a decimal point there.
exec 3>&-
Close fd 3.
cat File.txt
==> 1234.67890
I understood the purpose of the file descriptor and the "3> & 1 1> & 2 2> & 3" command by example below
#!/bin/bash
#it's normal case fd environment
echo test 1> afile.txt
echo "Test no 1"
cat afile.txt
echo "Test no 1"
echo test 2> afile.txt
echo "Test no 2"
cat afile.txt
echo "Test no 2"
echo test 1> afile.txt
echo "Test no 3"
cat afile.txt
echo "Test no 3"
echo test 2> afile.txt
echo "Test no 4"
cat afile.txt
echo "Test no 4"
echo > afile.txt
echo "------------------------------------------------------------------------"
#it's relocate filedescriptor and cause not problem, and cause error(std error)
var=
var=$(echo test 3>&1 1>&2 2>&3)
echo "Test no 5"
#cat afile.txt
echo $var
echo "Test no 5"
var=
var=$(echo test 3>&1 1>&2 2>&3)
echo "Test no 6"
#cat afile.txt
echo $var
echo "Test no 6"
var=
var=$(echo test 3>&1 1>&2 2>&3)
echo "Test no 7"
#cat afile.txt
echo $var
echo "Test no 7"
var=
var=$(echo test 3>&1 1>&2 2>&3)
echo "Test no 8"
#cat afile.txt
echo $var
echo "Test no 8"
When you run this example, you will see the file descriptors are rearranged and the output changes.
