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What is 2>&1 mean in Linux shell

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Consider we have a example command like this.

curl > /dev/null 2>&1

What does 2>&1 in the above command?

2 is a standard error (stderr) file descriptor.

> is used for redirection.

& indicates follow a file descriptor, not a file name.

1 is a standard output (stdout) file descriptor.

At final this 2>&1 command is used to redirect standard error to the standard output, it means to redirect the standard error to the same location where standard output is redirected.