ls -la /dev/tty shows the output:
crw-rw-rw- 1 root tty 5, 0 Dec 14 22:21 /dev/tty
What does c at the beginning mean? When I do something like pwd > /dev/tty it prints to the stdout. What does the file /dev/tty contain?
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unix
The 'c' means it's a character special file.
/dev/tty is a synonym for the controlling terminal (if any) of the current process. As jtl999 says, it's a character special file; that's what the c in the ls -l output means.
man 4 tty or man -s 4 tty should give you more information, or you can read the man page online here.
Incidentally, pwd > /dev/tty doesn't necessarily print to the shell's stdout (though it is the pwd command's standard output). If the shell's standard output has been redirected to something other than the terminal, /dev/tty still refers to the terminal.
You can also read from /dev/tty, which will normally read from the keyboard.
Source: Stackoverflow.com