Alternatively known as a device file or special file, a device name is an identification that is given to the physical hardware device assigned by the operating system.
A device name provides an interface to peripheral devices such as parallel and serial ports, or access to a disk partition. For example, “hd” being the device name for an ATA hard drive.
Examples of device names
The following table lists Linux device names in the /dev hierarchy and are all examples of device names.
Hardware terms, Operating System, Operating system terms, Reserved word
See our reserved word definition for a listing of the device file names on Windows and MS-DOS computers.
