Can't I get a /dev/one?

[William M. Quarles]

Chris Adams wrote:
> Once upon a time, William M. Quarles <walrus at bellsouth.net> said:
> 
>>>man tr
>>
>>Oh yeah, it also won't work because I'm talking binary, not ASCII.
> 
> 
> Wrong.
> 
> man tr

Wow, that man page was difficult to comprehend... pretty abstract... 
info tr wasn't much help either.  I had to find an article on it from 
the IBM website to figure out what I was doing.  Anyway, I do appreciate 
the help.

So, if I'm trying to write all ones to a drive, I'd want to do this?
tr '\00' '\77' </dev/zero >/dev/hdb

Looks like that will take a lot longer than dd, because it's only 
reading in one byte at a time.

If you are suggesting that I try the complement function I don't see how 
that helps.  Then again, I don't know what you are suggesting, since 
"man tr" doesn't communicate anything other than, "you are ignorant Mr. 
Quarles, go educate your self on this command called 'tr.'"  Well, I'm 
not as ignorant as I was a few minutes ago, but I am still lost.  Could 
you please volunteer a little more information now?

And again, I really do appreciate your help.

Thanks,
William