I read the following snippet: 

```
mysql -u $USER -p $PASS <<EOF 2> /dev/null  
CREATE DATABASE students;    
EOF   

```

Ok. So this runs the `mysql` client and does a `CREATE DATABASE`.  

My question is how come the `2>/dev/null` is not considered part of the `EOF`?  

I assume that the `<<` is for the input to the program `mysql` after it has connected with the user and password parameters.  

So how `2>/dev/null` is not part of the `<<`?