See
BLT.
device file: To make some things in Linux easier, Linux treats many things as files which one might normally not consider files. These include hardware "devices" (and processes, see
proc). A device file is a file that allows access to a hardware device -- you can read from it and write to it much like reading or writing to a file.
Aside: AFAIK, this ability to treat a device as a file has existed in Linux for a long time. However, it sounds like something new is coming into existence, the devfs -- see the second link below. It seems like this is a new approach, but still keeping the concept of device files. (I just skimmed the beginning of the FAQ.
See:
Contributors
- RandyKramer - 31 Jan 2002
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