First line (rm file1) deletes/removes file1.

Second line captures the text into file2.

The first part of line 3 (cat file1) fails as the file1 does not exist.

The && (AND) operator will ensure that the third line fails. The result of line 3 will be the result of first part of line 3 (cat file1).

Note: cat - concatenate files and print on the standard output

Note #1: A list is a sequence of one or more pipelines separated by one of the operators ‘;’, ‘&’, ‘&&’, or ‘||’, and optionally terminated by one of ‘;’, ‘&’, or a newline.

Of these list operators, ‘&&’ and ‘||’ have equal precedence, followed by ‘;’ and ‘&’, which have equal precedence.

AND and OR lists are sequences of one or more pipelines separated by the control operators ‘&&’ and ‘||’, respectively. AND and OR lists are executed with left associativity.

An AND list has the form

command1 && command2

command2 is executed if, and only if, command1 returns an exit status of zero.

An OR list has the form

command1 || command2

command2 is executed if, and only if, command1 returns a non-zero exit status.

The return status of AND and OR lists is the exit status of the last command executed in the list.

Note #2 (on exit status): Zero means command executed successfully, if exit status returns non-zero value then your command failed to execute.