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Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2007 10:15:32 -0500
From: "DePriest, Jason R." <jrdepriest AT gmail DOT com>
To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Subject: Re: Whither /dev/null ?
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On 9/14/07, Jean-Claude Gervais  wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I am writing bash scripts that are required to run unchanged (as much as
> possible) on Cygwin and Linux.
>
> A (small) detail I am having problems with is the issue of redirecting
> output to the null device, or bit-bucket.
>
> If I write the following
>
> ls > nul
>
> It works as expected under Cygwin, however under Linux I must write
>
> ls > /dev/null
>
> I searched and found discussions on the Cygwin mailing list that seemed
> to say that Cygwin supported (supports?) the /dev/null device, but I
> checked my installation and this pseudo-device didn't seem to exist on
> my system. The '/dev' folder was missing.
>
> I discovered that if I created the folder '/dev', afterwards
> the /dev/null device existed, even if it does not appear as an actual
> file under /dev
>
> I installed cygwin only a few weeks ago using the
> http://www.cygwin.com/setup.exe method, and it was missing the /dev
> folder.
>
> I compared this to the other machines around me which are running a
> version of Cygwin which is about two years old, same results: /dev is
> missing, but creating it unleashes the /dev/null pseudo-device.
>
> I'm wondering what is the best way to deal with this? I'd like the
> scripts to work straight out of the box and not have to make the users
> create their own /dev and creating it for them would be tedious because
> every script would have to check for this...
>
> Any advice?
> Puzzled about nothing.
> J
>

Did you check the Cygwin User's Guide?
http://cygwin.com/cygwin-ug-net/using-specialnames.html

It sort of explains it.

-Jason

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