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 3.74 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/.



Linux                                       2009-02-23                                    NULL(4)