null(4)

null4

The null device

Overview

The null device accepts and reads data as any ordinary (and willing) file - but throws it away. The length of the null device is always zero.

Files

/dev/null

Releases

87 releases since FreeBSD 2.0.5-RELEASE; the text changed 43 times.

  1. 2.0.5
  2. 2.1.5–2.1.7.1
  3. 2.2.2–2.2.8
  4. 2.2.9
  5. 3.0–3.2
  6. 3.3–3.4
  7. 3.5–3.5.1
  8. 4.0–4.2
  9. 4.3–4.11
  10. 5.0–5.2.1
  11. 5.3–6.3
  12. 6.4
  13. 7.0
  14. 7.1
  15. 7.2
  16. 7.3
  17. 7.4
  18. 8.0
  19. 8.1
  20. 8.2
  21. 8.3
  22. 8.4
  23. 9.0
  24. 9.1
  25. 9.2
  26. 9.3
  27. 10.0
  28. 10.1
  29. 10.2
  30. 10.3
  31. 10.4
  32. 11.0
  33. 11.1
  34. 11.2
  35. 11.3
  36. 11.4
  37. 12.0
  38. 12.1
  39. 12.2
  40. 12.3
  41. 12.4
  42. 13.0–13.2
  43. 13.3–14.5
  44. 15.0–16.0

History

A null device appeared in Version 4 AT&T UNIX.

From base 16.0-CURRENT-20261027-61c70dc16a79 in FreeBSD 16.0-CURRENT (2026-10-27). Parsed by carta from the page's mdoc source.