A device file or special file is an interface for a device driver that appears in a file system as if it were an ordinary file. This allows software to interact with the device driver using standard input/output system calls, which simplifies many tasks. An interface defines the communication boundary between separate computer components. ... Windows XP loading drivers during a Safe Mode bootup A device driver, or a software driver is a specific type of computer software, typically developed to allow interaction with hardware devices. ... In computing, a file system is a method for storing and organizing computer files and the data they contain to make it easy to find and access them. ... A computer file is a collection of information that is stored in a computer system and can be identified by its full path name. ... In computing, Input/output, or I/O, is the collection of interfaces that different functional units (sub-systems) of an information processing system use to communicate with each other, or the signals (information) sent through those interfaces. ... In computing, a system call is the mechanism used by an application program to request service from the operating system, or more specifically, the operating system kernel. ...

Device files often provide simple interfaces to peripheral devices, such as printers. But they can also be used to access specific resources on those devices, such as disk partitions. Finally, device files are useful for accessing system resources that have no connection with any actual device such as data sinks and random number generators. In computer engineering, hard disk drive partitioning is the creation of logical divisions upon a hard disk that allows one to apply operating system-specific logical formatting. ... In Unix-like operating systems, /dev/null or the null device is a special file that discards all data written to it, and provides no data to any process that reads from it. ... A random number generator is a computational or physical device designed to generate a sequence of elements (usually numbers), such that the sequence can be used as a random one. ...

Unix special files

Main article: Device node

There are two general kinds of device nodes in Unix-like operating systems, known as character special files and block special files. The difference between them lies in how data written to them and read from them is processed by the operating system and hardware. These together can be called device special files in contrast to named pipes, which are not connected to a device but are not ordinary files either. Wiki rocks. A device node is a special file type used on many Unix-like operating systems. ... A Unix-like operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, while not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification. ... In computing, a named pipe (also FIFO for its behaviour) is an extension to the traditional pipe concept on Unix and Unix-like systems, and is one of the methods of interprocess communication. ...

MS-DOS device files

MS-DOS borrowed the concept of special files from Unix, but renamed them device files. Because early versions of MS-DOS did not support a directory hierarchy, device files were distinguished from regular files by making their names reserved words. This means that certain file names are reserved for device files, and cannot be used to name new files or directories. The reserved names themselves are chosen to be compatible with "special files" handling of PIP command in CP/M. Microsofts disk operating system, MS-DOS, was Microsofts implementation of DOS, which was the first popular operating system for the IBM PC, and until recently, was widely used on the PC compatible platform. ... In computing, a directory, catalog, or folder, is an entity in a file system which can contain a group of files and/or other directories. ... A reserved word is a word which, in some computer programming language, cannot be used as an identifier because it is already used for some grammatical purpose. ... The Peripheral Interchange Program (PIP), on the Digital Equipment Corporations computers was a utility to transfer data files. ... In computing, a command is a directive to a computer program acting as an interpreter of some kind, in order to perform a specific task. ... CP/M is an operating system originally created for Intel 8080/85 and Zilog Z80 based microcomputers by Gary Kildall of Digital Research, Inc. ...

Some device files are listed below:

Reserved words cannot even be used with extensions, so that file names like "nul.doc" and "con.htm" are invalid. This has been known to confuse some users. The console is the text output device for system administration messages, particularly those from the BIOS or boot loader, the kernel, from the init system and from the system logger. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... A male DE-9 connector used for a serial port on a PC style computer. ... In computing, a parallel port is a type of physical interface used in conjunction with a cable to connect separate peripherals in a computer system. ... The bit bucket was originally the container on teletype machines or IBM key punch machines into which chad from the paper tape punch or card punch was deposited. ...