mknod is the unix syscall to make a special file, which may be a named pipe, a character device, or a block device. These are regular file namespace names with special actions associated with them. The facility of mknod is crucial to the unix idea that "everything is a file", including device drivers. The cLIeNUX user-space alias for mknod is "special", and of course the traditional name is supported.

See
The command mknod
The syscall mknod

RIGHTS

Copyright 1998/1999 Richard Allen Hohensee
Released for redistribution only as part of cLIeNUX Core