/dev/null is the blackhole equivalent of Linux systems. What is it and why it used?

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/dev/null is a virtual file with a unique way of dealing with files. Anything written on /Dev/null will disappear and can not be recovered. This is why it is called the black hole of Linux. It is a special device file used for creating files filled with zeroes.

What is /dev/null in Linux?

<p>/dev/null is not a “virtual file”, but a pipe. A pipe in linux is a special file type that represents a stream as a file descriptor. A stream is a system function that can receive or send arbitrary chunks of data.</p>
<p>The output of a console program is ususally piped into /dev/stdout and the input received from /dev/stdin. While /dev/stdout will send data streamed to it to the console, /dev/null will happily eat up streamed data without doing anything with it.</p>
