Hi all,

i am new in linux. i am learning embedded linux, in a book i saw such an usage.
can anyone tell me, how echo 49 > export could creat a file name is gpio49. on the command, gpio is not written.

root@beaglebone:∼# cd /sys/class/gpio
root@beaglebone:/sys/class/gpio# ls
export gpiochip0 gpiochip32 gpiochip64 gpiochip96 unexport
root@beaglebone:/sys/class/gpio# echo 49 > export
root@beaglebone:/sys/class/gpio# ls
export gpio49 gpiochip0 gpiochip32 gpiochip64 gpiochip96 unexport

thank you

Echo standard outputs what its input - in this case "49". ">" writes the standard output of the command to the filename you give after it, in this case export.

Something's up. That command won't write a file called "gpio49"

The filesystem is sys, that is a pseudo-filesystem for accessing parts of the OS. Contents are unlikely to be simple files. Within /sys/class most "files" are links into /sys/devices. Writing anything into these files sends a message to some aspect of a device, what the device does with it will depend upon the device.

In this case I would assume that export allows you to create a new channel to a gpio device (this is a guess), so sending "49" to it will cause gpio to create gpio49. Unless you know this level of detail for the device concerned you should not write to any devices in /sys.