When would you use an additional file descriptor?

Most commands have a single input channel (standard input, file descriptor 0) and a single output channel (standard output, file descriptor 1) or else operate on several files which they open by themselves (so you pass them a file name). (That's in addition from standard error (fd 2), which usually filters up all the way to the user.) It is however sometimes convenient to have a command that acts as a filter from several sources or to several targets. For example, here's a simple script that separates the odd-numbered lines in a file from the even-numbered ones

while IFS= read -r line; do
  printf '%s\n' "$line"
  if IFS= read -r line; then printf '%s\n' "$line" >&3; fi
done >odd.txt 3>even.txt

Now suppose you want to apply a different filter to the odd-number lines and to the even-numbered lines (but not put them back together, that would be a different problem, not feasible from the shell in general). In the shell, you can only pipe a command's standard output to another command; to pipe another file descriptor, you need to redirect it to fd 1 first.

{ while … done | odd-filter >filtered-odd.txt; } 3>&1 | even-filter >filtered-even.txt

Another, simpler use case is filtering the error output of a command.

exec M>&N redirects a file descriptor to another one for the remainder of the script (or until another such command changes the file descriptors again). There is some overlap in functionality between exec M>&N and somecommand M>&N. The exec form is more powerful in that it does not have to be nested:

exec 8<&0 9>&1
exec >output12
command1
exec <input23
command2
exec >&9
command3
exec <&8

Other examples that may be of interest:

• What does “3>&1 1>&2 2>&3” do in a script? (it swaps stdout with stderr)
• File descriptors & shell scripting
• How big is the pipe buffer?
• Bash script testing if a command has run correctly

And for even more examples:

• questions tagged io-redirection
• questions tagged file-descriptors
• search for examples on this site in the Data Explorer (a public read-only copy of the Stack Exchange database)

_{P.S. This is a surprising question coming from the author of the most upvoted post on the site that uses redirection through fd 3!}

Here's an example of using extra FDs as bash script chattiness control:

#!/bin/bash

log() {
    echo $* >&3
}
info() {
    echo $* >&4
}
err() {
    echo $* >&2
}
debug() {
    echo $* >&5
}

VERBOSE=1

while [[ $# -gt 0 ]]; do
    ARG=$1
    shift
    case $ARG in
        "-vv")
            VERBOSE=3
        ;;
        "-v")
            VERBOSE=2
        ;;
        "-q")
            VERBOSE=0
        ;;
        # More flags
        *)
        echo -n
        # Linear args
        ;;
    esac
done

for i in 1 2 3; do
    fd=$(expr 2 + $i)
    if [[ $VERBOSE -ge $i ]]; then
        eval "exec $fd>&1"
    else
        eval "exec $fd> /dev/null"
    fi
done

err "This will _always_ show up."
log "This is normally displayed, but can be prevented with -q"
info "This will only show up if -v is passed"
debug "This will show up for -vv"

In the context of named pipes (fifos) the use of an additional file descriptor can enable non-blocking piping behaviour.

(
rm -f fifo
mkfifo fifo
exec 3<fifo   # open fifo for reading
trap "exit" 1 2 3 15
exec cat fifo | nl
) &
bpid=$!

(
exec 3>fifo  # open fifo for writing
trap "exit" 1 2 3 15
while true;
do
    echo "blah" > fifo
done
)
#kill -TERM $bpid

See: Named Pipe closing prematurely in script?