What does 2> mean?

The 2> operator is used in shell scripting and command-line interfaces to redirect standard error (stderr) output to a file or another destination. In Unix-like operating systems, the file descriptor 2 represents standard error, while 1 represents standard output (stdout).

Example:

command 2> error.log

In this example, if command produces any error messages, those messages will be redirected to error.log instead of being displayed in the terminal. If error.log does not exist, it will be created; if it does exist, it will be overwritten.

You can also combine it with standard output redirection:

command > output.log 2> error.log

In this case, standard output will go to output.log, and standard error will go to error.log.