Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!decwrl!synoptics!unix!hplabs!hpl-opus!hpccc!hpcc01!hpdmd48!oscarh
From: oscarh@hpdmd48.boi.hp.com (Oscar Herrera)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.shell
Subject: Re: pipe equivalent to /dev/null ???
Message-ID: <8720004@hpdmd48.boi.hp.com>
Date: 17 Sep 90 15:13:23 GMT
References: <8720001@hpdmd48.boi.hp.com>
Organization: Hewlett Packard - Boise, ID
Lines: 20


|....................................................  Writing to /dev/null
|is very efficient (there are no user-to-kernel copies involved; indeed,
|you can pass illegal addresses to write() if and only if you are writing
|to /dev/null).
|-- 

	Yes, writing to /dev/null is darn efficient.  Try the following
	(Bourne) and watch the idle time parameter in monitor go to zero

	while true
	do
	ps -ef >/dev/null
	done

	BTW, in case you are still wondering why I needed the a pipe 
	equivalent to /dev/null, it was so that in RMBUX ( Rocky Mountain
	BASIC under HPUX ) I could construct the following statement:

	1000 PRINTER IS "| cat >/dev/null"