view wisdom/block device @ 12259:5d86806a2603 draft

<int-e> mkx ../bin/"//\\`^ 2 "quote${1:+ }$1"
author HackEso <hackeso@esolangs.org>
date Sat, 07 Dec 2019 23:54:29 +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.