Whither /dev/null ?

[Larry Hall (Cygwin)]

Brian Mathis wrote:
> On 9/14/07, Lewis Hyatt <lhyatt@princeton.edu> wrote:
>>> I'm wondering what is the best way to deal with this? I'd like the
>>> scripts to work straight out of the box and not have to make the users
>>> create their own /dev and creating it for them would be tedious because
>>> every script would have to check for this...
>>>
>>> Any advice?
>>> Puzzled about nothing.
>>> J
>>>
>>>
>> Did you try it without doing mkdir /dev first? It should still work fine.
>>
>> Lewis@LDH-Laptop ~
>> $ ls -l /dev
>> ls: cannot access /dev: No such file or directory
>>
>> Lewis@LDH-Laptop ~
>> $ ls -l /dev/null
>> crw-rw-rw- 1 Lewis None 1, 3 Sep 14 11:12 /dev/null
>>
>> -Lewis
>>
> 
> Maybe its been gone over before, but I question the wisdom of "hiding"
> a directory like that.  It seems counterintuitive, and obviously
> causes confusion for people.
> 
> Does creating a /dev directory (in the default install) cause a big problem?

Yes, this has been discussed before.  You can see the email archives to get
the details.

If you want to populate a '/dev' directory with all the devices Cygwin
supports on your system, feel free to do so.  As I recall, Igor
Peshansky floated a script on this list some time ago.  You can look
that up if you like.

-- 
Larry Hall                              http://www.rfk.com
RFK Partners, Inc.                      (508) 893-9779 - RFK Office
216 Dalton Rd.                          (508) 893-9889 - FAX
Holliston, MA 01746

_____________________________________________________________________

A: Yes.
 > Q: Are you sure?
 >> A: Because it reverses the logical flow of conversation.
 >>> Q: Why is top posting annoying in email?

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