SHELL

2>&1 linux pipe stderr, stdin, stdout

echo test > afile.txt
#redirects stdout to afile.txt. This is the same as doing

echo test 1> afile.txt
#To redirect stderr, you do:

echo test 2> afile.txt
#So >& is the syntax to redirect a stream to another file descriptor:

0 is stdin
1 is stdout
2 is stderr