The Windows NT command processor interprets a single digit followed by a redirection symbol as a request to redirect to the handle represented by that single digit. Handles 0, 1, and 2 are the standard input, standard output, and standard error, respectively. The handles 3 through 9 do not have default definitions. To prevent Windows NT from interpreting the single digit as a handle number, you must precede it with a caret (^). For example, the command
echo ^0>result.txt
will create a file called result.txt containing the single character zero, while the command
dir *.txt 1>result.txt 2>error.txt
will create a file called result.txt containing the output of the DIR command, while the file error.txt will contain any error messages. This is a very powerful extension of the Windows NT command processor, which is not implemented in Windows 95.