NULL
Section: Linux Programmer's Manual (4)
Updated: 2009-02-23
Index
Return to Main Contents
NAME
null, zero - data sink
DESCRIPTION
Data written to a
null
or
zero
special file is discarded.
Reads from the
null
special file always return end of file (i.e.,
read(2)
returns 0), whereas
reads from
zero
always return bytes containing zero (\0 characters).
null
and
zero
are typically created by:
-
mknod -m 666 /dev/null c 1 3
mknod -m 666 /dev/zero c 1 5
chown root:root /dev/null /dev/zero
FILES
/dev/null
/dev/zero
NOTES
If these devices are not writable and readable for all users, many
programs will act strangely.
SEE ALSO
chown(1),
mknod(1),
full(4)
COLOPHON
This page is part of release 3.74 of the Linux
man-pages
project.
A description of the project,
information about reporting bugs,
and the latest version of this page,
can be found at
http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.
Index
- NAME
-
- DESCRIPTION
-
- FILES
-
- NOTES
-
- SEE ALSO
-
- COLOPHON
-