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`2>&1 > /dev/null` will drop stdout and write stderr to stdout.

`> /dev/null 2>&1` will drop both stdout and stderr.

For myself, with `which` I would just use `> /dev/null`, as `which` writes to stdout and not stderr: if anything comes through stderr, you probably want to know about it.

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All right, but he wrote: "The 2>&1 > /dev/null puts both output stream and error stream to /dev/null (which means nothing printed on console).". So the intention was different.

PS. I think "which" will never produce anything on stderr

As Chris said, `2>&1 > /dev/null` will drop stdout and write stderr to stdout. If you do not want anything to printed on console, you can use it. Now only i came to know that `which` never produce the stderr. So it is enough to use `>/dev/null`.

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