2004-12-17, 11:31(+00), Bela Gazdy:
[...][vbcol=seagreen]
> Correct. Recycling wtmp, most of the times, means: cat /dev/null > /var/adm/wtmp[/
vbcol]
[...]

I've always wondered why people would use "cat /dev/null" as a
command that outputs nothing while there are that many other
ones that are built in the shell.

Is it because early Bourne shells had problems when redirecting
builtins?

: > /var/adm/wtmp # the most obvious
eval > /var/adm/wtmp
exec 3> /var/adm/wtmp 3>&-
shift 0 > /var/adm/wtmp
...

(and cd, read, command, printf, builtin, getopts, true, false...).

--
Stephane

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