[PLUG] Something funny going on...

Felix Lee flee at aracnet.com
Fri Aug 2 01:16:44 UTC 2002


On Thu, 1 Aug 2002, Colin Kuskie wrote:
> [colink at rock ~]$ perl -V
> syntax error at /dev/null line 1, near "=="
> Execution of /dev/null aborted due to compilation errors.

a google search on "syntax error at /dev/null" shows that
it's a question in the mod_perl FAQ.  the answer is not
very helpful though.

I can't duplicate your problem exactly, but if I
  chmod 600 /dev/null
then perl -V sez
  Can't open perl script "/dev/null": Permission denied

which makes me suspect that your /dev/null is no longer a
device, it's now an ordinary file.

I tried doing that a couple ways, but I still can't
duplicate your error, possibly because I have a different
version of perl or different perl modules installed.

if /dev/null is a file, then the problem will be evanescent
because many things will write to /dev/null, so any program
that relies on /dev/null having null input will have
unpredictable behavior.

The answer mentioned everywhere:
    sudo echo >/dev/null
is not going to fix any underlying problem.  So the person
who wrote the answer is either being dumb or is fucking
around.  If you do find that your problem was that /dev/null
was an ordinary file, please write the FAQ maintainer and
have the answer fixed.
--
[ sometimes plumbers need plumbing ]




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