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[–] 48 points 1 day ago* (8 children)

/dev/null sez nothing is also a file

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  • [–] 7 points 16 hours ago (6 children)

    Asking for a friend.

    If you can recognize "nothing" then "nothing" must be something right? So if nothing is a file, because /dev/null says so, then nothing MUST be something to be a file. And therefore /dev/null can't be nothing.

    Or do I just need more tea? Or maybe whisk(e)y?

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  • [–] 9 points 15 hours ago (5 children)

    The word "nothing" isn't itself nothing. It is something used to describe nothing.

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  • [–] 8 points 15 hours ago (3 children)

    The word "nothing" is the English word describing the concept of nothing. And I have to use the word to describe the concept. So yes, you are correct the word is itself "something". So that is probably one point for "nothing" to not exist.

    I have now consumed 3 cups of tea. And my head now hurts from thinking about nothing. I should never have stepped into this post.

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  • [–] 1 point 14 hours ago (2 children)

    it's just a sentinel value. You ve reached the end. gimme back the length

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  • [–] 1 point 13 hours ago

    in fact that gets used in abstract mathematics to first introduce the natural numbers. the empty set (nothing) (which you define as 0) is not itself nothing, so you can define the set that contains just the empty set, which now is not empty itself, but contains one element, so you define that as 1 ...

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