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In Unix-like operating systems, /dev/zero is a special file that provides as many null characters (ASCII NUL, 0x00) as are read from it. One of the typical uses is to provide a character stream for overwriting information. Another might be to generate a clean file of a certain size. Using mmap to map /dev/zero to the virtual address space is equivalent to using anonymous memory (not connected to any file).
Destroy data on a partition
#Do not execute this code on any computer unless you want to destroy all data on a partition! dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/<destination partition>
Create a 1MiB file filled with zeroes called 'foobar'
dd if=/dev/zero of=foobar count=1024 bs=1024
Like /dev/null, /dev/zero acts as a source and sink for data. All writes to /dev/zero succeed with no other effects (the same as for /dev/null, although /dev/null is the more commonly used data sink); all reads on /dev/zero return as many NULs as characters requested.
See also
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