Shell Programming and Scripting

I am new to unix and learning. Came across this statement
cmd 2>/dev/null/ <<EOF

2>/dev/null/ denotes that std error is stored in /dev/null but that is considered as a non-existent file!! What does << EOF mean and how does it affect?
I am really confused..
Can some one explain this staement.

Any help appreciated..

/dev/null is a special character device file, and has nothing to do with the << EOF part of the code you post.

Code:

$ ls -l /dev/null
crw-rw-rw-    1 root     system        2,  2 Apr 27 13:45 /dev/null

<< EOF is the open of a here-document:

So, in your case:

Code:

cmd 2>/dev/null/ <<EOF
feed cmd here
....
....
EOF

Code:

/dev/null

is a sink; think of it as a "black hole", where you can dump what you don't want.
By doing 2> /dev/null, you are dumping the stderr.

Code:

$ ls -l nonexistentFile
ls: nonexistentFile: No such file or directory

Code:

$ ls -l nonexistentFile 2>/dev/null

The error message is sent to the sink.

The here-document (<<EOF construct) is used to create a name-less file.

Code:

cmd <<EOF
line1
line2
EOF

is the same as

Code:

cmd file

where file contains:

Code:

line1
line2