Bit bucket
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In computing, the bit bucket is jargon for where lost computerized data has gone, by any means; any data which does not end up where it is supposed to, being lost in transmission, a computer crash, or the like, is said to have gone to the bit bucket — that mysterious place on a computer where lost data goes, as in:
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The errant byte, having failed the parity test, is unceremoniously dumped into the bit bucket, the computer's wastepaper basket.
— Erik Sandberg-Diment, New York Times, July 9, 1985.[1]
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Millions of dollars in time and research data gone into the bit-bucket?
— W. Paul Blase, The Washington Post, Feb. 17, 1990.[2]
Originally, the bit bucket was the container on Teletype machines or IBM key punch machines into which chad from the paper tape punch or card punch was deposited;[3] the formal name is "chad box" or (at IBM) "chip box".
The term was then generalized into any place where useless bits go, a useful computing concept known as the null device. The term bit bucket is also used in discussions of bit shift operations.[4]
Such a device is sometimes referred to as a "write once read never" or WORN device (named after the magneto-optical WORM devices used during the 80s). The WORN device is related to the First In Never Out stack and Write Only Memory, in a joke datasheet issued by Signetics in 1972. Atari implemented a WORN device as an Easter Egg in the operating system for the Atari 800, something revealed by Atari BASIC author Bill Wilkinson in a 1988 April Fool's article in Compute! magazine.[5]
In programming languages the term is used to denote a bitstream which does not consume any computer resources such as CPU or memory, by discarding any data "written" to it. In .NET Framework-based languages, it is the System.IO.Stream.Null.[6]
See also
- Black hole (Unix jargon)
- /dev/null
- Null route (Cisco jargon)
References
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- ↑ http://www.atarimagazines.com/compute/issue95/056_1_INSIGHT_ATARI_THAT_MONTH_AGAIN.php
- ↑ "Using null stream as bit bucket" — an article on C# at java2s.org.
External links
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Look up bit bucket in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. |
