Files and folders

This wiki describes common terms like file, directory, folder, path and file type/format

Files

In the field of information technology a file is a sum of related computer records as an object which an operating system, like Trisquel/GNU Linux is able to store and retrieve from a disk with the help of a file system. A file can be used to store, retrieve, edit, echo and transfer data and is identified with a filename on a filesystem.

Folders/Directories

Directories are there to organize files, the content. Directories doesn't keep files and other directories in it. They are special files which know where their contents are stored in the memory. A filename doesn't has to be unique within a filesystem, but within a directory. They can be visualized hierarchical.

Directory structures are often visualized as branches of a tree. Look at this example:

 boot
 dev
 etc
 home
 |
 --trisquel
 |  |
 |  --Desktop
 |  --Documents
 |  --Downloads
 |  --Music
 |  --Pictures
 |  --Templates
 |
 opt
 usr
 var
 etc...
 

Note: Every part of what you see above is actually a file.

Sometimes directories are called folders. That is also correct, but if you want to use the command line, you should use the term directory instead of folder, because this is the more common way and also some commands like "mkdir" and "rmdir" contain the term dir, a short form of directory in it.

Paths

A reference to a directory or a location of a file can be described with a file path or path, for example:

 /home/trisquel/Documents/

or

 /home/trisquel/Pictures/logo.png

Note: "Documents" is a directory. "Documents/" is a path whose last node is the directory. If you are using the command line, the "/" in "Documents" is optional. On the other hand "logo.png" is a file, so using "logo.png/" will fail.

File types/formats

A file format describes how data is stored within a file. There are different format standards for different data which programs can understand. File formats can be labeled with file extensions (png, txt, wav) like shown in the second example before. File formats are also called file types.