Used in the operating system to provide an interface to input/output devices. There is at least one special file for each device connected to the computer. Contrast with directory (page ***) and file (page ***).

a file system object which is accessed as though it was a file, but the sequence of bits is supplied or consumed by another process (or by the operating system itself) such as a device driver or network interface

an external file that cannot be created or read by a predefined Ada Input-Output package

an internal representation of a physical device

A file name interpreted internally by gawk, instead of being handed directly to the underlying operating system. For example, /dev/stdin. See section Standard I/O Streams.

A file name interpreted internally by gawk, instead of being handed directly to the underlying operating system. For example, `/dev/stderr'. See section Special File Names in gawk.