Date: Thu, 30 Jan 2003 18:04:10 +0200 From: Giorgos Keramidas <keramida@ceid.upatras.gr> To: Ruben de Groot <fbsd-q@bzerk.org> Cc: Jan Grant <Jan.Grant@bristol.ac.uk>, Darren Pilgrim <dmp@pantherdragon.org>, questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Why no /dev/one? Message-ID: <20030130160410.GC51238@gothmog.gr> In-Reply-To: <20030130151339.GA17486@ei.bzerk.org> References: <3E390FF3.5020706@pantherdragon.org> <Pine.GSO.4.44.0301301150270.17135-100000@mail.ilrt.bris.ac.uk> <20030130151339.GA17486@ei.bzerk.org>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On 2003-01-30 16:13, Ruben de Groot <fbsd-q@bzerk.org> wrote: >On Thu, Jan 30, 2003 at 11:53:05AM +0000, Jan Grant typed: >>On Thu, 30 Jan 2003, Darren Pilgrim wrote: >>>Giorgos Keramidas wrote: >>>> On 2003-01-30 00:25, Darren Pilgrim wrote: >>>>> Why isn't there a /dev/one device to provide an infinite number of >>>>> all-ones bytes? >>>> >>>> Because it's easy to get any sequence of equal bytes by using just >>>> /dev/zero and tr(1). Try this command and check the output of hd(1) >>>> :-) >>>> >>>> $ dd if=/dev/zero bs=512 count=1 | tr '\0' '\777' | hd >>> >>>What I was trying to get at was more a question of if there's some deep >>>technical reason for the lack of a /dev/one beyond the triviality of >>>flipping the bits in a pipe. >> >> Nobody's implemented it. It'd be trivial; but why would you want it? That's a good reason. Nobody has written one, because nobody thought there would be a good reason to have one. Of course, patches that implement something like that are always ok. But then we'd have to write kernel drivers for /dev/two, /dev/three and /dev/one-million-six too and that's not a good idea :-( > And while you're at it, what about /dev/yes and /dev/no to automate > interactive scripts. Or, if you like the challenge, a /dev/fibonacci > and a /dev/pi would be very welcome :) Argh no! :P This is even more easy with yes(1) $ yes 'custom text' | head -3 custom text custom text custom text $ /me hides in a corner to save himself from the evil tomatoes that are probably heading his way by now :) To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20030130160410.GC51238>