/dev/zero

In Unix-like operating systems, /dev/zero is a special file that provides as many null characters (ASCII NUL, 0x00) as are read from it. One of the typical uses is to provide a character stream for overwriting information. Another might be to generate a clean file of a certain size. Using mmap to map /dev/zero to the virtual address space is the BSD way of implementing shared memory.

Destroy data on a partition #Do not execute this code on any computer unless you want to destroy all data on a partition! dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda8

Create a 1MiB file filled with zeroes called 'foobar' dd if=/dev/zero of=foobar count=1024 bs=1024Like /dev/null, /dev/zero acts as a source and sink for data. All writes to /dev/zero succeed with no other effects (the same as for /dev/null, although /dev/null is the more commonly used data sink); all reads on /dev/zero return as many NULs as characters requested.

ee also

*dd (Unix)
*Unix philosophy
*Standard streams
*:/dev/full
*:/dev/null
*:/dev/random
*:/dev

es:/dev/zero
it:/dev/zero
ja:/dev/zero
nl:/dev/zero
pl:/dev/zero
pt:/dev/zero
ru:/dev/zero
tr:/dev/zero