Bash redirection with file descriptor or filename in variable

Question

In my script I want to be able to write to either a file or to stdout based on certain conditions. I'm curious as to why this doesn't work in my script:

out=\&1
echo "bird" 1>$out

I tried different combination of quotes, but I keep having a "&1" file created instead of it writing to stdout. What can I do to get this to work how I want?

Answer 1

A possibly safer alternative to eval is to dup your destination into a temporary file descriptor using exec (file descriptor 3 in this example):

if somecondition; then exec 3> destfile; else exec 3>&1; fi

echo bird >&3