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?? you seem to assume that the redirection affects the executing shell itself, whereas, IMO, it only affects the command. so, if the shell can't find the command, no redirection, and the shell reports the error as usual, no?

There seems to be a difference between bash and sh - the former behaves as I would like, the latter as you describe.

Under sh, something like

if (basename >/dev/null 2>&1); then echo foo; fi

will hide the shell's stderr.

okay, I admit, I had to check;-) but for sh, the above will not hide the shell's stderr, only the condition's stderr, if that condition is found and executed (reassociating the redirection with the whole helps, though):

sh $ if (fullname >/dev/null 2>&1); then echo hi; fi fullname: not found $ if (fullname 2>>/dev/null); then echo hi; fi fullname: not found $ if fullname ; then echo hi ; fi 2>>/dev/null $

whereas, as Malcolm pointed out, bash differs from sh here..:-(

bash bash-2.04$ if (fullname >/dev/null 2>&1); then echo hi; fi bash-2.04$ if (fullname 2>>/dev/null); then echo hi; fi bash-2.04$ if fullname ; then echo hi ; fi 2>>/dev/null bash-2.04$ if fullname; then echo hi; fi bash: fullname: command not found bash-2.04$

Claus