Re: Non-interactive shell and /dev/null

[Craig Dickson <crdic@pacbell.net>]

Try KDE wrote:

> I noticed some shell script, for example  those under /etc/cron.*/, uses 
> "command > /dev/null" style. I think it's because they know the scripts 
> is run under non-interactive shell. My question is, what would happen if 
> ">/dev/null" is removed and the command tries to print something to 
> "standand out" (who knows where it is :)  Will that cause real trouble 
> or simply leaves mess on some virtual console?

Anything sent to stdout from a cron job will be mailed to the owner of
the cron job (by default, unless the MAILTO environment variable
specifies otherwise). So redirecting to /dev/null is basically a way of
saying, "I don't want this mailed to me, just throw it away."

Craig