A file is a named collection of related information that is recorded on secondary storage. From a user’s perspective, a file is the smallest allotment of logical secondary storage; that is, data cannot be written to secondary storage unless they are within a file. Commonly, files represent programs (both source and object forms) and data. Data files may be numeric, alphabetic, alphanumeric, or binary. Files may be free form, such as text files, or may be formatted rigidly. In general, a file is a sequence of bits, bytes, lines, or records, the meaning of which is defined by the file’s creator and user. The concept of a file is thus extremely general.
The information in a file is defined by its creator. Many different types of information may be stored in a file—source or executable programs, numeric or text data, photos, music, video, and so on. A file has a certain defined structure, which depends on its type. A text file is a sequence of characters organized into lines (and possibly pages). A source file is a sequence of functions, each of which is further organized as declarations followed by executable statements. An executable file is a series of code sections that the loader can bring into memory and execute
File Attributes
A file is named, for the convenience of its human users, and is referred to by its name. A name is usually a string of characters, such as example.c. Some systems differentiate between uppercase and lowercase characters in names, whereas other systems do not. When a file is named, it becomes independent of the process, the user, and even the system that created it.
For instance, one user might create the file example.c, and another user might edit that file by specifying its name. The file’s owner might write the file to a USB disk, send it as an e-mail attachment, or copy it across a network, and it could still be called example.c on the destination system
A file’s attributes vary from one operating system to another but typically consist of these:
- Name. The symbolic file name is the only information kept in human readable form.
- Identifier. This unique tag, usually a number, identifies the file within the file system; it is the non-human-readable name for the file
- Type. This information is needed for systems that support different types of files
- Location. This information is a pointer to a device and to the location of the file on that device
- Size. The current size of the file (in bytes, words, or blocks) and possibly the maximum allowed size are included in this attribute
- Protection. Access-control information determines who can do reading, writing, executing, and so on.
- Time, date, and user identification. This information may be kept for creation, last modification, and last use. These data can be useful for protection, security, and usage monitoring.
File Operations
The operating system can provide system calls to create, write, read, reposition, delete, and truncate files.
- Creating a file. Two steps are necessary to create a file. First, space in the file system must be found for the file
- Writing a file. To write a file, we make a system call specifying both the name of the file and the information to be written to the file. Given the name of the file, the system searches the directory to find the file’s location. The system must keep a write pointer to the location in the file where the next write is to take place. The write pointer must be updated whenever a write occurs
- Reading a file. To read from a file, we use a system call that specifies the name of the file and where (in memory) the next block of the file should be put. Again, the directory is searched for the associated entry, and the system needs to keep a read pointer to the location in the file where the next read is to take place. Once the read has taken place, the read pointer is updated. Because a process is usually either reading from or writing to a file, the current operation location can be kept as a per-process current file-position pointer. Both the read and write operations use this same pointer, saving space and reducing system complexity
- Repositioning within a file. The directory is searched for the appropriate entry, and the current-file-position pointer is repositioned to a given value. Repositioning within a file need not involve any actual I/O. This file operation is also known as a file seek
- Deleting a file. To delete a file, we search the directory for the named file. Having found the associated directory entry, we release all file space, so that it can be reused by other files, and erase the directory entry
- Truncating a file. The user may want to erase the contents of a file but keep its attributes. Rather than forcing the user to delete the file and then recreate it, this function allows all attributes to remain unchanged—except for file length—but lets the file be reset to length zero and its file space released
- File pointer. On systems that do not include a file offset as part of the read() and write() system calls, the system must track the last read– write location as a current-file-position pointer. This pointer is unique to each process operating on the file and therefore must be kept separate from the on-disk file attributes
- File-open count. As files are closed, the operating system must reuse its open-file table entries, or it could run out of space in the table. Multiple processes may have opened a file, and the system must wait for the last file to close before removing the open-file table entry. The file-open count tracks the number of opens and closes and reaches zero on the last close. The system can then remove the entry
- Disk location of the file. Most file operations require the system to modify data within the file. The information needed to locate the file on disk is kept in memory so that the system does not have to read it from disk for each operation.
- Access rights. Each process opens a file in an access mode. This information is stored on the per-process table so the operating system can allow or deny subsequent I/O requests.