/dev/null not working

Hi,

I have a statement like this:

COMMAND="which java"
RUN_COMMAND=`eval "$COMMAND"` > /dev/null
echo "Output of the command:"$RUN_COMMAND

Here if java doesn't exist in the system it throws some output like
no java in (/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin
And I don't want this to be on the console.
So, even after redirecting the output to /dev/null it's still sending the output to the console.
Any idea?

Well I got the answer...

COMMAND="which java"
RUN_COMMAND=`eval "$COMMAND"" 2> /dev/null"`
echo "Output of the command:"$RUN_COMMAND

Yes, the "2>" directs stderr to /dev/null where ">" redirects standard output.

More to the point, the redirection was moved to within the command ticks. Where it was in the original only related to the variable setting command, not the running of the command. The change to stderr (file 2) is what made the error message be thrown to the bit bucket.