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< DigitalTelevision | Knowledge Base | DisplayManager >

This article is about the file-system concept, for a Helpdesk directory see List of Support Articles.

A directory (also known as a "folder") is a file-system object that can contain regular files and other directories. Normally users refer to directories as "folders" because that is basically what they are.

On UNIX, directories are addressed through "paths" which are strings of directory names separated by slashes ("/"). All are located under a "root" directory which is simply referred to as "/", in this manner a UNIX file-system resembles an upside-down tree and is often referred to as such.

Thus, one ascends and descends the file-system tree as one gets closer to root and deeper into subdirectories, respectively. Most graphical file managers also use this paradigm.

As an example, consider the path path /home/nick/somefolder/somefile. The initial "/" refers to the file-system root. Each subsequent "/" is a separator indicating one more level "down" in the directory tree. Thus "home" is a folder in "/" "nick" a folder in "home" and "somefolder" a folder in "nick". The only way we know that "somefile" is a folder in "somefolder" and not another directory is the name, a path can go on indefinitely.

In this diagram the root is to the left and thus left equals "up" and right equals "down".

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