[NTLUG:Discuss] Stupid Question

[MadHat]

At 01:59 PM 4/26/2001 -0500, you wrote:
>Hello,
>
>I'm a newbie to linux so pardon the stupid question. What exactly does the
>"/dev/null" directory do?
>
>Is it a directory where things are routinely purged or is it something
>else? If a file were to be placed in that directory what exactly would
>happen to it??
>

$ ls -l /dev/null
crw-rw-rw-    1 root     root       1,   3 May  5  1998 /dev/null

It is not a directory...  it is an always empty file.  anything copied or 
sent to the file is gone.  If the file is copied over something else, the 
'something else' is now a 0 length file. It is often called the bit bucket 
as it is where you send bits you don't care about or don't want to see.

http://www.dictionary.com/cgi-bin/dict.pl?term=/dev/null

The c in the first entry of an ls with the -l flag denotes this is a 
character (unbuffered) special file/device...

>Will
>
>_______________________________________________
>http://www.ntlug.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss

--
MadHat at unspecific.com