[SLUG] Re: Quick Unixy Q.

[Angus Lees <gusl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

\begin{James Morris}
> One example of usage is to allocate page-aligned memory by mmap()ing
> /dev/zero (see http://www.intercode.com.au/jmorris/rawutil/), instead of
> using the deprecated valloc() function.

on some unices (solaris?) that don't support MAP_ANON, you mmap /dev/zero
to get a chunk of memory that will be shared with your children (iirc)
(see APUE)


/dev/zero is sort of a /dev/null for input. being able to provide a file
of inexaustable zeroes is really good when you just want "some
input, but i don't care what"

/dev/full is one i've never managed to use tho (return "device is full"
on any write)

-- 
 - Gus