/dev/null sez nothing is also a file
Bluewing 9 points a month ago
Asking for a friend.
If you can recognize "nothing" then "nothing" must be something right? So if nothing is a file, because /dev/null says so, then nothing MUST be something to be a file. And therefore /dev/null can't be nothing.
Or do I just need more tea? Or maybe whisk(e)y?
Bluewing 11 points a month ago
The word "nothing" is the English word describing the concept of nothing. And I have to use the word to describe the concept. So yes, you are correct the word is itself "something". So that is probably one point for "nothing" to not exist.
I have now consumed 3 cups of tea. And my head now hurts from thinking about nothing. I should never have stepped into this post.
gandalf_der_13te 5 points a month ago
in fact that gets used in abstract mathematics to first introduce the natural numbers. the empty set (nothing) (which you define as 0) is not itself nothing, so you can define the set that contains just the empty set, which now is not empty itself, but contains one element, so you define that as 1 ...
SpaceCowboy 26 points a month ago
Unfortunately, no one can be told what a file is. You have to see it for yourself.
This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill - the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill - you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the file system goes.
NeatNit 34 points a month ago
UnderpantsWeevil 3 points a month ago
I feel like it's more of a "If I tried to tell you what this was, you wouldn't believe me" than a "I am physically incapable of explaining the idea that you're plugged into a computer".
Ensign_Crab 8 points a month ago
Can you read me?
BartyDeCanter 2 points a month ago
In the end, we are all files. We have our read()s and write()s, in in our time we play many offsets.
Equinox1289 6 points a month ago
Okay, but what are blocks then? A file is really just a bunch of blocked stacked together with the inode metadata also sitting on another block, so is everything just blocks or because you can emulate a block device on a filesystem, are blocks themselves files? If that last part is true then files are infinitely recursive and my head is starting to spin.
BartyDeCanter 4 points a month ago
You are almost ready to take the next step. But to do so, you must unlearn what you think you know. Write a filesystem that does not have blocks for a media without pages, and you will find the footprints of your next teacher.
jj4211 1 point a month ago
The devnode that is used to reference the block is a file, so you come back to blocks just 'being offsets into some file'.
Though system calls, ioctls and networking credibly get away from file semantics
Zozano 5 points a month ago
path: 0 25816097 25819325, hotness: undefined, score: 5, children: 0
It's more likely than you think.
jj4211 4 points a month ago
Missing stage 7: Not everything is a file.
Linux is closer than other *nixes (sysctl equivalents in some platforms are not files, but they are files in Linux).
However get very far into network and the file-like behaviors become more limited. From an application, at least you have a decent chance of having unseekable, but otherwise 'file-like' interaction with stream protocols. Then you need recvmsg/sendmsg. Then you want to deal with low level interaction with the network stack and dealing with NETLINK and such..
call_me_xale 3 points a month ago
That's where plan9 comes in!
Redjard 0 points a month ago
The troubles between stage 2 and 6 are probably realizing dirs are not files, and seeing that device and driver files are different things from data files. Then stage 6 would be realizing that filesystems themselves just sit on device files. The directories and data files are in the device files. In truth, everything is a device file.
But then, I propose a stage 7. Because when you trace it all back, with mounts pointing to device files sitting in mounted file systems, you see that /dev is a tempfs, mounted in a tempfs, in which device files are "mounted". The fondamental root, /, is underneath the root filesystem a tempfs too. At boot, the kernel makes a tempfs, and later overlays the rootfs mounted from the /dev mounted in the root tempfs.
Everything is a filesystem, ever,thing is mounted. The true files, device files, are mounted too. They are the mounting of a kernel module in the same way a directory - a filesystem - is a mounted kernel module.
The Linux world is a ying and yang between dir structures and mounted kernel modules. In all of this, data files, the "true files", don't even show up. At the end, it's just the kernel talking to itself.
BartyDeCanter 1 point a month ago
Don’t leap ahead, or you will come to a false conclusion. Write a filesystem, then write another using a completely different approach for a system without a kernel. Then run them on each others targets. Only then will your mind be clear enough to see.
Redjard 2 points a month ago
Hm, I wrote a btrfs tool once that operates on an unmounted btrfs partition (so I can introduce forbidden states).
And I wrote a normal fuse-based emulated fs to fool a game into loading my custom infinite world as a save.
What more do I need to reach dao?
BartyDeCanter 1 point a month ago
The old masters did not have fuse and there are more devices than your SSD. Write a log formatted filesystem for an SPI flash chip, and move your fuse-based system onto a HDD. Then the next path will be revealed.
JackbyDev 54 points a month ago
It makes more sense when you realize that it's not that everything is files it's that everything can be treated as a file. There are other APIs to interact with things, but everything can be interacted with as if it was a file. It doesn't seem as bonkers like this.
absentbird 18 points a month ago
Exactly. A file is really just a way to understand a collection of bits. So saying everything is files is like saying everything in computers can be described as sets of bits, which is not a terrible heuristic.
BobWehadababyitsaboy 15 points a month ago
It's like saying everything is a wave IRL.
InternetCitizen2 8 points a month ago
Especially the particles
possiblylinux127 8 points a month ago
Files don't actually exist once you dig down
JackbyDev 9 points a month ago
Yeah, it sort of depends on the definition of the word file. "File" in the sense that it can be interacted with like a file versus "file" in the sense that it's data on a disk. But then, if you're really thinking about it, data on a disk isn't a file, it's data, and we can just interact with it like a file.
ivanafterall 5 points a month ago
🤯
BartyDeCanter 2 points a month ago
Welcome, brother. But remember that they must walk the path themselves or they will never reach true understanding.
gandalf_der_13te 7 points a month ago
tldr: it's to have nicer, less complicated I/O operations
it enables just having two API calls: read() and write() to do everything
heartSagan5 6 points a month ago
In Windows land, it's HANDLEs...which is typedef void* HANDLE IIRC
h4x0r 2 points a month ago
Generally speaking, a handle is an opaque reference to an os object; the typedef here makes that clear. Linux uses the same general concept as well, though file objects are typically referenced through file descriptors rather than windows style handles.
BlueKey 6 points a month ago
But some things are directories (like cgroups). And Networknamespaces were also controled in a weird way.
And then there are kernel features which are not exposed through a file or syscall but through a special type of socket.
Axolotl_cpp 9 points a month ago
Aren't directories just files that say "hey i am directory ABCD and file X, Y and Z are my childs"?
notabot 5 points a month ago
Directories are just files if you squint at then right, and sockets are basically files too. As another commenter said, it's not that everything is literally a file, but that it presents as a file, and can be interacted with as one.
Flower 2 points a month ago
To feel really old: http://themindsetlist.com/lists/
palordrolap 2 points a month ago
Class of '99 here.
There's at least a decade between the beginning of that list and people regularly using punch cards and tape. Maybe two.
Magnetic tapes and actually floppy floppy disks were the medium of choice in the interim.
Axolotl_cpp 5 points a month ago
You could argue that a collection of punch cards is a file
Flower 3 points a month ago
If you put them in a physical file and it gets jostled they go out of order and you have a problem. You want them in stacks.
I think technically it's only a file when it's managed by the system itself (reading, writing, modifying, storing) so punch cards are not files.
vivalapivo 5 points a month ago
Epstein's?
InternetCitizen2 2 points a month ago
Yeah, but in the BSD land as their licensing is more Libertarian esqu.
purplemonkeymad 5 points a month ago
echo hello > /dev/tcp/2b00:13c0:47:1422::5/7236
beejboytyson 1 point a month ago
But what about the fotoes?
alectronic 2 points a month ago
I suspect sarcasm but in case it is not, photos are just binary files, just like videos and many other file formats.
beejboytyson 2 points a month ago
Haha no my friend uses Linux and I haven't made the switch because I was under the impression that you have to be a command line wiz. Then he went on a rant about graphical interface.
BartyDeCanter 1 point a month ago
Eh, there are distros where you will never need to touch a command line if you don't want to. In fact, most modern mainstream ones are that way: Mint, Fedora, Ubuntu, etc.
Though I don't understand the fear of the command line. My grandmother owned two computers in her life and both of them were command line only. She was not a researcher at a university, a professional programmer or anything like that, just a normal person with a high school education.
She just wasn't afraid to read the manual and try things. I still remember the spiral-bound manual with post-its covered in her nurses shorthand.
She used them to run the books for the family business, first an Apple ][, then a PC running DOS. She also used them to write letters and the church newsletter, practice Bridge, organize her family genealogy work, and things like that.
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