Explanation of “Everything is a File” and Types of Files in Linux

onebuck · 09-18-2017, 06:20 PM

Hi,

Explanation of “Everything is a File” and Types of Files in Linux

Quote:

If you are new to Linux, or have used it for a few months, then you must have heard or read statements such as “In Linux, everything is a File”.

Read Also: 5 Useful Commands to Manage Linux File Types

That is in fact true although it is just a generalization concept, in Unix and its derivatives such as Linux, everything is considered as a file. If something is not a file, then it must be running as a process on the system.
To understand this, take for example the amount of space on your root (/) directory is always consumed by different types of Linux files. When you create a file or transfer a file to your system, it occupies some space on the physical disk and it is considered to be in a specific format (file type).
And also the Linux system does not differentiate between files and directories, but directories do one important job, that is store other files in groups in a hierarchy for easy location. All your hardware components are represented as files and the system communicates with them using these files.

Very resourceful article and a good read.
Hope this helps.
Have fun & enjoy!

dedec0 · 09-19-2017, 12:03 PM

Do you (people reading this thread) think the above post is useful?

I do. I enjoyed reading it, adding a few details to what I already knew. But there is no way to easily and quickly thank Onebuck. There are comments, fine, but I am imagining something as simple as "Mark this post as useful". It does not exist for first posts, from what I have seen.

Onebuck, please make a post with (possibly) just a link to #1, so me and more people may thank you.

(:

jsbjsb001 · 09-19-2017, 12:10 PM

Yep, that's one of the biggest differences between UNIX/Linux and Windows, in that Windows just treats files as storage of information, but on the other hand UNIX/Linux uses the file system as a "communications channel".

Thanks for the link onebuck!

onebuck · 09-19-2017, 02:04 PM

Hi,

Quote:

Originally Posted by dedec0

Do you (people reading this thread) think the above post is useful?

I do. I enjoyed reading it, adding a few details to what I already knew. But there is no way to easily and quickly thank Onebuck. There are comments, fine, but I am imagining something as simple as "Mark this post as useful". It does not exist for first posts, from what I have seen.

Onebuck, please make a post with (possibly) just a link to #1, so me and more people may thank you.

(:

Thank you! I post this type of thread that contains useful information to our LQ members. I read a lot and find jewels then I attempt to share those.

For original posts a member can give rep on the left side of post by clicking on the scale. You can then submit a comment when you are giving rep.

Hope this helps.
Have fun & enjoy!

dedec0 · 09-19-2017, 05:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by onebuck

For original posts a member can give rep on the left side of post by clicking on the scale. You can then submit a comment when you are giving rep.

I did not even imagine that! (:

Sometimes I feel good when someone marks a post I did as useful. But I imagined that more members could do that, which did not seem usual around here.

Now, let me find a bit more about that feature...

sundialsvcs · 09-19-2017, 09:07 PM

Trouble is, although something might have a place in the filesystem, it does not necessarily correspond to "space on disk." For instance, the /proc, /sys, /dev "directories" are purely synthetic. Likewise, a filesystem-location might correspond to a socket.