How to Catch Standard Error to a Variable in Bash

To store stderr into a variable we need to use command substitution.

VAR=$(command)

But, by default, command substitution only catches the standard output(stdout). To capture stderr we need to use 2>&1 redirector.

Following example, will store both stdout and stderr into the $VAR variable.

VAR=$(cat file1.txt nofile.txt 2>&1)
echo $VAR

To get standard errors only, we need to redirect stdout to the "/dev/null" file.

Following example will get stderr into the $ERROR variable and discard the stdout.

ERROR=$(cat file1.txt nofile.txt 2>&1 > /dev/null)
echo $ERROR