I have been trying to read the source code for linux. I started watching a Youtube video which mentioned that character and block devices are different. It didn't say much about why it matters because once something is on the filesystem its the same.
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2Did you try Googling this? – Kusalananda Feb 24 '18 at 12:31
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@MarkPlotnick I did take a look at that answer. I specifically wanted to know why is it so necessary to differentiate. – piepi Feb 24 '18 at 16:05
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It's just historical. Block device drivers get access to common kernel routines for buffer caching and io scheduling. As mentioned in the answer to [this question](https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/259193/what-is-a-block-device), FreeBSD has eliminated block devices and has a different framework for buffers and scheduling. – Mark Plotnick Feb 24 '18 at 17:40
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This is just easy to understand a block device can be read block to block a character device is read char by char ...
/dev/random is char for example /dev/tyy is char
etc...etc...
char devices can be controlled with special chars like ctrl+G makes a physical serial console to emit a Beep for example....
the simpliest explaination : it depends on method needed to read/write to them
francois P
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