NULL(4) Linux Programmer's Manual NULL(4)
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 contain-
ing zero ( 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 3.44 of the Linux man-pages project. A description of the project, and information about reporting bugs, can
be found at http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.
Linux 2009-02-23 NULL(4)
