Talk:/dev/null

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do nirvana lie in the Unix virtual device /dev/null ? ponder! :-)

Contents 1 Windows NT 2 Compare to GUI OS Trash cans? 3 Link to this article 4 Musings on the Characteristics of the Null Device

[edit] Windows NT

In Windows NT, it works somewhat like UNIX, but with a bit of DOS compatibility added in. Like UNIX, NT has a single root directory, but called \ instead of /. (NT's root directory can be considered to be on a RAM disk.) NT's equivalent to /dev is the \Device directory. Inside it is the \Device\Null device node, which works identically to UNIX's /dev/null.

The Win32 function for opening files, CreateFile, has a DOS compatibility layer. It translates filenames from DOS format into the native NT format. DOS devices are located in the NT directory \??. When opening the special file NUL:, CreateFile actually translates your request into opening the NT native file \??\NUL. \??\NUL is a symbolic link to \Device\Null.

[1] is a great program for exploring the native NT file system.

--- Myria 07:54, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Compare to GUI OS Trash cans?

How is dev/null different than a trashcan in today's modern OSs? --Navstar 21:01, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

How is it similar? It has nothing to do with storing "deleted" files.--Prosfilaes 13:23, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Link to this article

I found that it is somewhat difficult to link to this article because of the leading slash. Also, the article is technically a subpage, right?

The following doesn't work right because the leading slash makes the link relative to the current page (or is it the top-level page?):

[[/dev/null]] → produces → /dev/null

I was successfully able to link the the article using a leading colon in the link href:

[[:/dev/null]] → produces → /dev/null

Now I can't find a way to link to the talk page of the article!

[[Talk:/dev/null]] → produces → Talk:/dev/null

[[Talk::/dev/null]] → produces → [[Talk::/dev/null]]

[[:Talk:/dev/null]] → produces → Talk:/dev/null

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Blooper Glooper (talk • contribs) 02:03, 4 February 2007 (UTC1)

Why do you think that [[Talk:/dev/null]] and [[:Talk:/dev/null]] do not work? (The wiki engine automatically turns self-links into bolded text. See Help:Self link.) —Tobias Bergemann 08:39, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

You could just use the redirect: /dev/null --Closedmouth 14:46, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Musings on the Characteristics of the Null Device

full/not full? dimensions of dev/null - 0 or approaching infinity? is the null device equally available to an infinite number of simultaneously executing threads? User:.digamma/null —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.82.74.18 (talk) 22:11, 11 March 2008 (UTC)