# man > zero(4)

[_null_(4)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/null/4/markdown)                               Kernel Interfaces Manual                               [_null_(4)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/null/4/markdown)

## NAME
       null, zero - data sink

## DESCRIPTION
       Data written to the _/dev/null_ and _/dev/zero_ special files is discarded.

       Reads  from _/dev/null_ always return end of file (i.e., [**read**(2)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/read/2/markdown) returns 0), whereas reads from
       _/dev/zero_ always return bytes containing zero ('\0' characters).

       These devices are typically created by:

           mknod -m 666 /dev/null c 1 3
           mknod -m 666 /dev/zero c 1 5
           chown root:root /dev/null /dev/zero

## FILES
       _/dev/null_
       _/dev/zero_

## NOTES
       If these devices are not writable  and  readable  for  all  users,  many  programs  will  act
       strangely.

       Since Linux 2.6.31, reads from _/dev/zero_ are interruptible by signals.  (This change was made
       to help with bad latencies for large reads from _/dev/zero_.)

## SEE ALSO
       [**chown**(1)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/chown/1/markdown), [**mknod**(1)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/mknod/1/markdown), [**full**(4)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/full/4/markdown)

Linux man-pages 6.7                          2023-10-31                                      [_null_(4)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/null/4/markdown)