How to redirect output of an entire shell script within the script itself?

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Addressing the question as updated.

#...part of script without redirection...

{
    #...part of script with redirection...
} > file1 2>file2 # ...and others as appropriate...

#...residue of script without redirection...

The braces ‘{ … }’ provide a unit of I/O redirection. The braces must appear where a command could appear – simplistically, at the start of a line or after a semi-colon. (Yes, that can be made more precise; if you want to quibble, let me know.)

You are right that you can preserve the original stdout and stderr with the redirections you showed, but it is usually simpler for the people who have to maintain the script later to understand what’s going on if you scope the redirected code as shown above.

The relevant sections of the Bash manual are Grouping Commands and I/O Redirection. The relevant sections of the POSIX shell specification are Compound Commands and I/O Redirection. Bash has some extra notations, but is otherwise similar to the POSIX shell specification.

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