bash: /dev/null: No such file or directory. Why is /dev/null implemented using the windows NUL device?

[Christopher Faylor]

On Thu, Jun 01, 2006 at 10:57:30AM +0100, Robert McKay wrote:
>I guess my next question is..  how hard would it be to simply replace
>the cygwin /dev/null with one that doesn't use the NUL device?  If I
>could remove the /dev/null device and replace it with a second
>/dev/zero device that would probably fix 99% of my problems as most
>things are only trying to write to /dev/null, not read from it.  If I
>could write my own /dev/null device that just implemented a couple of
>do-nothing read/write syscalls without using the windows NUL service
>that would be even better.

Personally, I would be rather concerned if my Windows system started
dropping devices like "NUL" and I'd wonder what else was wrong with it.
I don't think modifying cygwin to deal with the breakage is really in
your best interest.  I think getting to the bottom of the problem is
what you need to do.  Maybe you have a virus?  Or maybe one of those
system doctor programs will be able to diagonose what's going on.

cgf

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