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Suppress output of loud commands you don't want to hear from

Terminal - Suppress output of loud commands you don't want to hear from
function quietly () { $* 2> /dev/null > /dev/null; };
2011-10-02 05:02:48
User: GinoMan2440
1
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Suppress output of loud commands you don't want to hear from

Suppresses all output to /dev/null. This could be expanded to check for a -l command line option to log the stderr to a file maybe -l file or -l to log to default quietly.log. I'm finding that I use it more often than one would think.

Show sample output | Add to favourites | Report as malicious

Alternatives

There are 3 alternatives - vote for the best!

Terminal - Alternatives
quietly() { "$@" |&:; }
2011-10-04 07:29:02
User: netizen
4
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Down
Suppress output of loud commands you don't want to hear from
Comments (1) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious
quietly() { "$@" > /dev/null 2>&1; }
2011-10-04 06:45:42
User: wipu
Tags: redirection function parameter expansion
2
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Suppress output of loud commands you don't want to hear from

This works even if there are spaces in any word in the command line.

Show sample output | Comments (1) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious

Know a better way?

If you can do better, submit your command here.

What others think

less verbose to do it like >/dev/null 2>&1

Comment by TheMightyBuzzard 85 weeks and 4 days ago

Wow, that's a good idea. A few things, though.

You need to quote $* just in case the command has a space in it.

Shorten the redirects as TheMightyBuzzard says.

Shorten the name to something simple, maybe 'q' (too much typing otherwise :-)

function q () { "$*" > /dev/null 2>&1; };

Of course in bash, you don't need the keyword 'function'!

q() { "$*" > /dev/null 2>&1; };
Comment by flatcap 85 weeks and 4 days ago

fantastic, i have created 2 aliases for me. one for total silence, the other just redirects err to out for easy grepping ;)

function q () { $* 2>&1 ; }

function qq () { $* 2> /dev/null > /dev/null; }

PS: I do not think quotes are necessary or even good.

Comment by oernii3 85 weeks and 3 days ago
* without quotes fails, if there are spaces in the command or its arguments. $* with quotes "expands to a single word with the value of each parameter separated by the first character of the IFS special variable." (man bash). So it tries to run the whole command-line as a command name.

So, the only valid option here is "$@". It expands to a list of quoted words, just like the original.

Comment by wipu 85 weeks and 2 days ago

Your point of view

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