Managing Directories

• Welcome to linuxzoo
  • Essential Linux
    • The Unix File Structure
      • Managing Directories

Like files, directories are containers. But instead of text of other data, directories can contain files and other directories. In addition, directories are hierarchically organised, that is a directory has a parent directory 'above' and may also have sub-directories 'below'. Similarly, each sub-directory can contain other files and also can have more sub-directories. As they are hierarchically organised, directories provide a logical way to organise files. With the help of directories, you can organise your files into manageable, logically related groups.

The structure of a Unix system resembles an inverted tree. At the top of the tree is the root directory represented in path names as /. At this point it should be said that in the strictest sense this is called a forward slash, but Unix users generally just pronounce it as 'slash'.