Redirection and discarding of error objects

Bruce Payette's book, page 259, has an example showing capturing error info
in a variable other than $error, and suppressing the errors being displayed:

PS> dir nofuss, nomuss, nobother -ErrorVariable errs 2>$null

Obviously, these are non-existing files and indeed $errs.count equals 3.
However, I do not understand the constant 2 in the command. If I leave it
out, or fill in some other number, the errors are sent to the console.
What's the magic of 2 here, why 2? It must be something simple I overlooked,
or is it just time for coffee?

Thanx,
Hans

"Hans Dingemans" <hans_dingemans@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:%23mxy$u0$HHA.4496@xxxxxx

2> is the standard notation for error output (ie where to send error
messages), as 1> or > is for standard output. So in that particular case no
errors appear on the screen, since they're sent to '$null', but they are
sent to the variable $errs.


The following is taken from the output from this command, and may help

get-help about_Operator


Redirection Operators
2>&1 Add errors to results
1>&2 Add results to errors overwritten
< Input from (not supported)
2>> Append errors to a file
2> Errors from operation are directed to named file, previous
file contents are overwritten

--
Jon

On Sep 25, 3:11 pm, "Hans Dingemans" <hans_dingem...@xxxxxx>
wrote: '2>' is the redirection operator specifically for errors; there really
isn't a constant '2' in the command. The number 2 is used for
historical reasons, I assume; the handle for the standard error I/O
stream on a Unix system is 2. You can read about all of the
redirection operators supported by PowerShell starting on page 138 of
Bruce's book.

Jeff

Thanx to both for quick and detailed answers; the network at its best!


"Hans Dingemans" <hans_dingemans@xxxxxx> wrote in message
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