Como a pergunta final é se existem locais especiais que normalmente não poderiam ter um arquivo, como no diretório / dev estipulado no POSIX, então o andswer é YES .
A lista completa de arquivos e diretórios pré-determinados é dada no capítulo 10, Estrutura de Diretório e Dispositivos POSIX , da Especificações da Base do Grupo Aberto do IEEE, Edição 6 :
The following directories shall exist on conforming systems and conforming applications shall make use of them only as described. Strictly conforming applications shall not assume the ability to create files in any of these directories, unless specified below.
/
The root directory.
/dev
Contains /dev/console, /dev/null, and /dev/tty, described below.The following directory shall exist on conforming systems and shall be used as described:
/tmp
A directory made available for applications that need a place to create temporary files. Applications shall be allowed to create files in this directory, but shall not assume that such files are preserved between invocations of the application.The following files shall exist on conforming systems and shall be both readable and writable:
/dev/null
An infinite data source and data sink. Data written to /dev/null shall be discarded. Reads from /dev/null shall always return end-of-file (EOF).
/dev/tty
In each process, a synonym for the controlling terminal associated with the process group of that process, if any. It is useful for programs or shell procedures that wish to be sure of writing messages to or reading data from the terminal no matter how output has been redirected. It can also be used for applications that demand the name of a file for output, when typed output is desired and it is tiresome to find out what terminal is currently in use.The following file shall exist on conforming systems and need not be readable or writable:
/dev/console
The /dev/console file is a generic name given to the system console (see System Console). It is usually linked to an implementation-defined special file. It shall provide an interface to the system console conforming to the requirements of the Base Definitions volume of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001, Chapter 11, General Terminal Interface.