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How to ignore "can't open file" error message in unix

I am searching table name in all scripts across the directories in specific directory. eg. home/abcd

I have abc, pqr, xyz directory under home/abcd. I have my project specific scripts inside these directories.

I have used the command like this.

grep table_name home/abcd/abc | cut -d":" -f1 > output.txt

Here, whenever the file under this directory don't have READ permission, I am getting an error message like this:

Can't open the file.

But, I don't want to show this message on the screen.

Solution

  • Use 2>/dev/null so that stderr will not appear:

    grep table_name home/abcd/abc 2>/dev/null | cut -d":" -f1 > output.txt

    Test

    $ ls -ltr a*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 me me 24 Oct  9 14:06 a
--wx-wx-wx 1 me me  0 Oct  9 14:10 a1 <--- no reading rights
$ grep a a*
a:123 abc
grep: a1: Permission denied
$ 
$ grep a a* 2>/dev/null
a:123 abc