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What does this command mean in a shell script? What is the functionality of writing this command in the shell script??

. /opt/pat/staging/config/VARIABLES>>/dev/null
AS Mackay
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Titly Ghosh
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  • If this were broken down into smaller questions ("what does `. somescript` do?" and "what does `>>/dev/null` mean?"), this might have made it easier to find an individual answer for each. – Charles Duffy Aug 24 '18 at 14:48

2 Answers2

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Sources the file in order to load the variables into your current environment and sends only stdout (not stderr) to /dev/null (black hole, if you will).

To send both stdout and stderr you would do >/dev/null 2>&1.

Charles Duffy
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py9
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Runs the script in the context of the current shell and sends all its output to the null device to avoid having it in the current standard output.

tripleee
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Poshi
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