/dev/null
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.44 in modern English
11
Scrabble Score
7
Letters
2
Syllables
6
Unique Chars
Meaning
name
A device file, present in Unix and Unix-like operating systems such as Linux, that discards all data written to it and yields no output, always presenting as an empty file when read.
Example Sentences
- "It's possible to suppress the compiler's warnings by redirecting standard error to /dev/null."
- "To avoid problems when running the script, the output of man man was sent to /dev/null instead of sending it to a real terminal. This has the effect of discarding the already formatted text of the retrieved page."
- "[...] we reserve file descriptors 0, 1, and 2 by opening /dev/null and duplicating the file descriptor returned. /dev/null is a pseudo-driver that forces read to return 0 and write to return as if the entire amount requested had been written. This makes library routines that use file descriptors 0, 1, and 2 harmless."
- "Continuing in the Unix tradition of treating everything as a file, you can redirect a command's output to the null file, /dev/null. The null file consumes all output sent to it, as if /dev/null is a black hole star."
- "Thoughtful discussion and criticism is welcomed, but please send all flames to dev null."
- "suddenly the RLP calls form atlanta apparently go to dev null."
Etymology
From Unix operating systems, where /dev (the Unix directory containing device files) contains a null entry representing no device.