Devices – Difference Between /dev/null and /dev/zero

devices

When trying to redirect to /dev/null and /dev/zero, the output it is discarded. It seems both /dev/null and /dev/zero accept and discard all input. So, what is the difference between /dev/null and /dev/zero?

Best Answer

Yes, both accept and discard all input, but their output is not the same:

  • /dev/null produces no output.
  • /dev/zero produces a continuous stream of NULL (zero value) bytes.

You can see the difference by executing cat /dev/null and cat /dev/zero.

  • Try cat /dev/null > file and you will find an empty file.

  • Now try cat /dev/zero > file, while watching the size of the file (watch -n 1 du -h file) continuously increase. This is because reading from /dev/zero gives an endless stream of \0 (null) characters.

Use dd to visualize the difference more appropriately:

$ dd if=/dev/null of=file count=10
0+0 records in
0+0 records out
0 bytes (0 B) copied, 0.000276193 s, 0.0 kB/s


$ dd if=/dev/zero of=file count=10
10+0 records in
10+0 records out
5120 bytes (5.1 kB) copied, 0.00090775 s, 5.6 MB/s

/dev/zero is used to create dummy files or swap.

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