A file descriptor is a number that uniquely identifies an open file in a computer's operating system. It describes a data resource, and how that resource may be accessed.
When a program asks to open a file — or another data resource, like a network socket — the kernel of the operating system grants access, makes an entry in the global file table, and provides the software with the location of that entry.
The descriptor is identified by a unique non-negative integer, such as 0, 12, or 567. At least one file descriptor exists for every open file on the system.
File descriptors were first used in Unix, and are used by modern operating systems including Linux, mac OS X, and BSD. In Microsoft Windows, file descriptors are known as file handles.
Overview
When a process makes a successful request to open a file, the kernel returns a file descriptor which points to an entry in the kernel's global file table. The file table entry contains information such as the inode of the file, byte offset, and the access restrictions for that data stream (read-only, write-only, etc.).
Stdin, Stdout, and Stderr
On a Unix-like operating system, the first three file descriptors, by default, are STDIN (standard input), STDOUT (standard output), and STDERR (standard error).
Redirecting File Descriptors
File descriptors may be directly accessed using bash, the default shell of Linux, macOS X, and Windows Subsystem for Linux.
For example, when you use the find command, successful output goes to stdout (file descriptor 1), and error messages go to stderr (file descriptor 2). Both streams display as terminal output:
We're getting errors because find is trying to search a few system directories that we don't have permission to read. All the lines that say "Permission denied" were written to stderr, and the other lines were written to stdout.
find / -name '*something*'/usr/share/doc/something
/usr/share/doc/something/examples/something_random
find: `/run/udisks2': Permission denied
find: `/run/wpa_supplicant': Permission denied
/usr/share/something
/usr/games/somethingYou can hide stderr by redirecting file descriptor 2 to /dev/null, the special device in Linux that "goes nowhere":
find / -name '*something*' 2>/dev/null/usr/share/doc/something
/usr/share/doc/something/examples/something_random
/usr/share/something
/usr/games/somethingThe errors have been sent to /dev/null, and are not displayed.
Understanding the difference between stdout and stderr is important when you want to work with a program's output. For example, if you try to grep the output of the find command, you'll notice that the error messages are not filtered, because only the standard output is piped to grep.
find / -name '*something*' | grep 'something'/usr/share/doc/something
/usr/share/doc/something/examples/something_random
find: `/run/udisks2': Permission denied
find: `/run/wpa_supplicant': Permission denied
/usr/share/something
/usr/games/somethingHowever, you can redirect standard error to standard output, and then grep will process the text of both:
find / -name '*something*' 2>&1 | grep 'something'/usr/share/doc/something
/usr/share/doc/something/examples/something_random
/usr/share/something
/usr/games/somethingNotice that in the command above, the target file descriptor (1) is prefixed with an ampersand ("&").