title: Redirect standard error to null in Bash - "date: invalid date `Never'"
body: <p>I require the following error to be redirected to the /dev/null file.</p>
  
  <pre><code>a=$(date -d "Never" +%s)  &gt; /dev/null 2&gt;&amp;1
  date: invalid date `Never'
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The date that is input to the date command is actually being passed through a variable which sometimes acquires "Never". In such a case, an error is shown as shown in the above message which is required to be suppressed.</p>
  
  <p>Is there another method to redirect the output to the null file?</p>