Sorts of files
Most files are just files, called regular files; they contain normal data, for example text files, executable files or programs, input for or output from a program and so on.
While it is reasonably safe to suppose that everything you encounter on a Linux system is a file, there are some exceptions.
Directories: files that are lists of other files.
Special files: the mechanism used for input and output. Most special files are in /dev, we will discuss them later.
Links: a system to make a file or directory visible in multiple parts of the system's file tree. We will talk about links in detail.
(Domain) sockets: a special file type, similar to TCP/IP sockets, providing inter-process networking protected by the file system's access control.
Named pipes: act more or less like sockets and form a way for processes to communicate with each other, without using network socket semantics.
| Symbol | Meaning |
|---|---|
| - | Regular file |
| d | Directory |
| l | Link |
| c | Special file |
| s | Socket |
| p | Named pipe |
| b | Block device |
No comments:
Post a Comment