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 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 3.25 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)