From man bash :)
REDIRECTION
       Before  a command is executed, its input and output may be
       redirected using a special  notation  interpreted  by  the
       shell.   Redirection  may  also  be used to open and close
       files for the current shell  execution  environment.   The
       following redirection operators may precede or appear any-
       where within a simple command or  may  follow  a  command.
       Redirections  are processed in the order they appear, from
       left to right.

       In the following descriptions, if the file descriptor num-
       ber is omitted, and the first character of the redirection
       operator is <, the  redirection  refers  to  the  standard
       input  (file descriptor 0).  If the first character of the
       redirection operator is >, the redirection refers  to  the
       standard output (file descriptor 1).

       The word following the redirection operator in the follow-
       ing descriptions, unless otherwise noted, is subjected  to
       brace  expansion,  tilde  expansion,  parameter expansion,
       command substitution, arithmetic expansion, quote removal,
       pathname  expansion, and word splitting.  If it expands to
       more than one word, bash reports an error.

       Note that the order of redirections is  significant.   For
       example, the command

              ls > dirlist 2>&1

       directs  both  standard  output  and standard error to the
       file dirlist, while the command

              ls 2>&1 > dirlist

       directs only the standard output to file dirlist,  because
       the  standard  error  was  duplicated  as  standard output
       before the standard output was redirected to dirlist.