Bit bucket
From Free net encyclopedia
The bit bucket was originally the container on teletype machines or IBM key punch machines into which chad from the paper tape punch or card punch was deposited. In theory, the bit bucket was full of '1' bits, the '0' bits being represented by the places on the paper tape or punched card that the punch had not punched out.
The term was then generalized into any place where useless bits go including the trash can or rubbish bin. In Unix and unix-like, this term is used to refer to /dev/null. In OpenVMS, this term refers to SYS$NULL:.
The term is also used to refer to that mysterious place on a computer where lost documents go, as in:
- "What happened to that important spreadsheet that you were just editing?"
- "Oh, it went into the bit bucket."
This usage is also taken to mean any data which does not end up where it is supposed to, being lost in transmission, a computer crash, or the like.
The bit bucket is also used in discussions of bit shift operations. When the width of a given binary number is fixed, one or more bits are lost when performing a simple shift. These bits are said to have "fallen off" or to have "fallen into the bit bucket".