view wisdom/block device @ 11753:30e9da8f43b5 draft

<shachaf> slwd fizzie//s/sneaky //
author HackEso <hackeso@esolangs.org>
date Wed, 13 Mar 2019 01:03:43 +0000
parents 272663b31668
children
line wrap: on
line source

Block devices are a concession made in Unix to make raw hard disks and magnetic tape have a similar interface to regular files and terminals. Since magnetic tapes can't write individual bytes, only entire blocks, the interface isn't exactly the same, thus the dreaded dd obs= option was born.