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