How to store standard error in a variable

alsoUseless.sh

This will allow you to pipe the output of your useless.sh script through a command such as sed and save the stderr in a variable named error. The result of the pipe is sent to stdout for display or to be piped into another command.

It sets up a couple of extra file descriptors to manage the redirections needed in order to do this.

#!/bin/bash

exec 3>&1 4>&2 #set up extra file descriptors

error=$( { ./useless.sh | sed 's/Output/Useless/' 2>&4 1>&3; } 2>&1 )

echo "The message is \"${error}.\""

exec 3>&- 4>&- # release the extra file descriptors

It would be neater to capture the error file thus:

ERROR=$(</tmp/Error)

The shell recognizes this and doesn't have to run 'cat' to get the data.

The bigger question is hard. I don't think there's an easy way to do it. You'd have to build the entire pipeline into the sub-shell, eventually sending its final standard output to a file, so that you can redirect the errors to standard output.

ERROR=$( { ./useless.sh | sed s/Output/Useless/ > outfile; } 2>&1 )

Note that the semi-colon is needed (in classic shells - Bourne, Korn - for sure; probably in Bash too). The '{}' does I/O redirection over the enclosed commands. As written, it would capture errors from sed too.

WARNING: Formally untested code - use at own risk.

Redirected stderr to stdout, stdout to /dev/null, and then use the backticks or $() to capture the redirected stderr:

ERROR=$(./useless.sh 2>&1 >/dev/null)