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From: les@chinet.chi.il.us (Leslie Mikesell)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.shell
Subject: Re: pipe equivalent to /dev/null ???
Message-ID: <1990Sep11.013805.3594@chinet.chi.il.us>
Date: 11 Sep 90 01:38:05 GMT
References: <8720001@hpdmd48.boi.hp.com> <8720002@hpdmd48.boi.hp.com>
Organization: Chinet - Chicago Public Access UNIX
Lines: 22

In article <8720002@hpdmd48.boi.hp.com> oscarh@hpdmd48.boi.hp.com (Oscar Herrera) writes:

>||Is there an equivalent 'pipe' like entity to /dev/null ?
>||What I'd like to do is something like this 
>||	anycommand | bitbucket
>	Well, I found the answer to my own question.
>		touch bitbucket
>		chmod +x bitbucket
>	Then    
>		ll | bitbucket      
>	works well.

This will work only so long as the process generating the output doesn't
generate enough data to fill a pipe buffer.  Since your "null" program
isn't actually going to read anything, when the pipe fills, the writing
program will block. 
A more reasonable method would be to use "|cat >/dev/null", though the
result is the same as a simple ">/dev/null".  Why did you want the
pipe, anyway?

Les Mikesell
  les@chinet.chi.il.us