FILES & FOLDERS

  FILES & FOLDERS:

 A file is a collection of data or information that is stored on some kind of storage device, and is known by its name the file name .In other words, it is a sequence of bytes stored as a single unit on the storage. Almost all the information that is stored in a computer is in the form of files. Even things like device drivers are stored as files. There are different kinds of file for storing different data .For example, a text file stores plain text, a bitmap file stores images in bitmap format, and an executable file stores programs or applications. These different file formats are distinguished in the Windows operating system by their extensions. An extension is the string of characters after the last dot in the file name. For example, if the file name is 'My encyclopedia of.technology.htm', then the extension of the file is 'html', and so it is an HTML file. When you double click a file name in Windows Explorer, it is opened in the default application for handling that file type. This application is determined by Windows, by examining its file extension. In other operating systems like Linux, file extension does not matter. The operating systems identify the file by examining its header, i.e., the first few bytes of the file. Different files have different file formats. File formats are the layout of data organized in that file. Thus to open a bitmap file, you need a software that can recognize the layout of data in a bitmap file. There are some programs which examine the file extension first to determine whether they can read the format or not, and there are some programs that do not look at the extension, but directly use the bit pattern of the file to determine this. Files are normally arranged on the storage in different organizational units, called folders or directories. A directory is a container that stores files. In modern GUI based operating systems like Windows, the directories are called folders. All the files in a computer are arranged like a inverted tree, where the trunk represents the root folder (c:\\\\ in Windows), the branches represent the folders and the leaves represent the files.