dev-null

What is dev-null?

The 'dev-null' npm package provides a writable stream that acts as a black hole, discarding all data written to it. This can be useful for testing, benchmarking, or simply ignoring output that is not needed.

What are dev-null's main functionalities?

Writable Stream

Creates a writable stream that discards all data written to it. This is useful for scenarios where you need to provide a writable stream but do not care about the data being written.

const devnull = require('dev-null');
const stream = devnull();

stream.write('This data will be discarded');
stream.end();

Piping Data

Demonstrates how to pipe data from a readable stream to the dev-null writable stream, effectively discarding the data read from the input file.

const devnull = require('dev-null');
const fs = require('fs');

const readStream = fs.createReadStream('input.txt');
const writeStream = devnull();

readStream.pipe(writeStream);

Other packages similar to dev-null

stream-buffers

The 'stream-buffers' package provides streams that store data in memory buffers. Unlike 'dev-null', which discards data, 'stream-buffers' allows you to access the data later. This can be useful for testing and debugging.

through2

The 'through2' package provides a simple way to create transform streams. While 'dev-null' discards data, 'through2' allows you to manipulate data as it passes through the stream. This is useful for data processing tasks.

noop-stream

The 'noop-stream' package provides a writable stream that does nothing with the data written to it, similar to 'dev-null'. However, 'noop-stream' is a more lightweight alternative with fewer features.

README

dev-null

/dev/null for node streams

Use it whenever you need to interrupt stream flow for instance if you want to log the state of a stream instead of its output.

// without devnull
var numbers = require('../test/fixtures/number-readable')

numbers({ to: 2 })
  .on('data', function (d) { console.log(d.toString()) });
// => 
// 0
// 1
// 2

// piping into devnull
var devnull = require('dev-null');
var numbers = require('../test/fixtures/number-readable');

numbers({ to: 2 })
  .pipe(devnull())
  .on('data', function (d) { console.log(d.toString()) });

// => (no output)

Installation

npm install dev-null

License

MIT