With vim, a file seems to be filled with '^@' characters even though it was created as an empty file.
Issue
I created an empty file with dd command but it is filled with '^@' characters. Why?
[root@host]# dd if=/dev/zero of=emptyfile.dat bs=1M count=10
[root@host]# vi emptyfile.dat
^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@
^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@
.... snip ...
Environment
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6
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