difference-redirecting to bit bucket(aka /dev/null) vs closing the file descriptor

Question

Is there any difference between the below two commands?

ls -l some_non_existing_file 2>/dev/null

and

ls -l some_non_existing_file 2>&-

Both seems to work but I have seen only the first one being used practically so far.

Answer 1

Attempts by the program to output data to stderr will fail in the second case with EBADF. Whether the program cares or not is a separate issue.