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Armin
Asked: 2011-06-20 00:48:13 +0800 CST

Is there a device file that just blocks?

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... something similar to /dev/null, but that just blocks all bytes that are written to it?

What I need is a trick to hold an arbitrary executable in memory by blocking its output. Pipes don't seem to be usable, because the output gets written to a buffer first.

linux bash cygwin

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    You can create a named pipe (fifo) using mkfifo. Writes to this type of special file will block until a process reads from it.

    $ mkfifo blocker
$ echo hello > blocker # "hangs"

    In another session:

    $ cat blocker
hello                  # the `echo` above unblocks after this
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