What does &> do in bash?

The operators we are using here are:

• > Syntax: file_descriptor_opt > file_name
• >& Syntax: file_descriptor_opt >& file_descriptor
• &> Syntax: &> file_name

If the file descriptor is omitted, the default is 0 (stdin) for input, or 1 (stdout) for output. 2 means stderr.

So we have:

• >name means 1>name — redirect stdout to the file name
• &>name is like 1>name 2>name — redirect stdout and stderr to the file name (however name is only opened once; if you actually wrote 1>name 2>name it’d try to open name twice and perhaps malfunction).

So when you write git status 2&>1, it is therefore like git status 2 1>1 2>1 , i.e.

• the first 2 actually gets passed as an argument to git status.
• stdout is redirected to the file named 1 (not the file descriptor 1)
• stderr is redirected to the file named 1

This command should actually create a file called 1 with the contents being the result of git status 2 — i.e. the status of the file called 2 which is probably “Your branch is upto-date, nothing to commit, working directory clean”, presuming you do not actually track a file called 2.