[erlang-questions] file:open/2 and Unix Device Files

[Richard O'Keefe]

On 5 Nov 2008, at 12:52 am, Martin Scholl wrote:
> I have just noticed that opening a device file other than "/dev/null"
> will fail with eisdir.

It's amazing what you'll find in the archives.
I asked this very question once, and was told that the
key distinction is that reading from (or writing to) a
file won't wait for _too_ long, but that devices can
take very long amounts of time.