?also, the ELDD book claims that misc_register() calls the kernel
routine class_device_create(). ?i'm looking at the entire
kernel implementation for misc drivers in drivers/char/misc.c, and
what i see is a call to device_create() instead. ?i suspect i should
start following the flow of control here, but i'm still curious as to
how that /dev file came into existence without any obvious help
from udev.

In linux 2.6.20,kernel still use class_device_create().
After linux 2.6.22(maybe,I can't remember),kernel use device_create()
instead of class_device_create().