zero(4)

zero4

The zero device

Overview

The zero device accepts and reads data as any ordinary (and willing) file, but throws away any data written to it, and returns an endless supply of null bytes when read.

Files

/dev/zero

Releases

86 releases since FreeBSD 2.1.5-RELEASE; the text changed 42 times.

  1. 2.1.5–2.1.7.1
  2. 2.2.2–2.2.8
  3. 2.2.9
  4. 3.0–3.2
  5. 3.3–3.5.1
  6. 4.0–4.2
  7. 4.3–4.11
  8. 5.0–6.3
  9. 6.4
  10. 7.0
  11. 7.1
  12. 7.2
  13. 7.3
  14. 7.4
  15. 8.0
  16. 8.1
  17. 8.2
  18. 8.3
  19. 8.4
  20. 9.0
  21. 9.1
  22. 9.2
  23. 9.3
  24. 10.0
  25. 10.1
  26. 10.2
  27. 10.3
  28. 10.4
  29. 11.0
  30. 11.1
  31. 11.2
  32. 11.3
  33. 11.4
  34. 12.0
  35. 12.1
  36. 12.2
  37. 12.3
  38. 12.4
  39. 13.0–13.2
  40. 13.3–14.3
  41. 14.4–14.5
  42. 15.0
  43. 15.1–16.0

History

A zero device appeared in 4.4BSD.

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