Bit bucket
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In computing jargon, the bit bucket (or byte bucket[2][3]) is 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:
History
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;[1] 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]
The bit bucket is related to the first in never out buffer and write-only memory, in a joke datasheet issued by Signetics in 1972.[5]
In a 1988 April Fool's article in Compute! magazine, Atari BASIC author Bill Wilkinson presented a POKE that implemented what he called a "WORN" (Write Once, Read Never) device, "a close relative of the WORM".[6]
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.[7]
See also
References
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- ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1". [3] (NB. Digital Research's ASM-86 uses token 'Z' (for "zero") to indicate the byte bucket.)
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