What is the effect of using >&2 in a command?

• A. Redirects the output to standard error.
• B. Redirects the output to standard output.
• C. Redirects the output to /dev/null.
• D. Changes the exit status of the command.

Answer: (A)

Redirecting with >&2 makes the command’s standard output go to the same place as standard error. In Bash, stdout is FD 1 and stderr is FD 2; appending >&2 duplicates FD 2 onto FD 1, so anything that would be printed to stdout is now sent to the error stream. This changes where the normal output goes, but it does not change the command’s exit status, nor does it send output to /dev/null (that would require a different redirection, like > /dev/null 2>&1). For example, echo hi >&2 writes to the error stream instead of normal output.