1. Use explicahell.com :
ou
2. Pesquise a página man do seu shell
fazendo:
$ man sh #replace sh with another shell if you need to
Você pode procurar um estilo Ctrl-F de padrão pressionando /
, digitando o padrão de pesquisa e pressionando enter.
Resumo:
echo: display a line of text
$?: expands to the exit status of the most recently executed command/pipeline
ls: list directory contents
>>: append output
2>&1: redirecting stderr (fd=2) to stdout (fd=1) (which is "$File" in append mode in this context)