PPT Slide
Files and File Systems
- A useful abstraction is typical in a file system:
- File name space (directory structure): human-readable strings
- File data space: actual data blocks of the files
- Note how the system calls reflect this abstraction:
- open() maps a string to a local file ID.
- read(), write(), close() use the local file ID, not a string.
- Other (UNIX) file system calls that deal with the file name space also use strings (mkdir(), unlink(), etc.).