Directory Structures

The system contains thousands of files, and some structure is essential. Files are put into directories, and directories may contain other directories, so the directories form a tree structure.

You will own a few branches of the tree.

For example:

Notes:

1.

Trees occur frequently in computer science, and are conventionally drawn with the root at the top, in the same way as family trees.

2.

The ``leaves'' of the tree are those files which are not directories (or empty directories containing no files). In the tree above, only one such file is shown, the one called lightbulbs

3.

The above tree is just an example, which bears some resemblance to the real one. However, the real one is different in a number of ways.

4.

Notice that there are two directories called CS100 (one under gdg/teaching, one under bloggsf). The commands for manipulating and moving around the tree obviously need to be able to specify which one is meant in a particular command.

5.

"everything" is known as "/" in Unix