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How many types of files are there in Linux/Unix and what are they?

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File types In Linux/Unix

This is because Linux considers every thing as a file. When ever you start working on Linux/Unix box you have to deal with different file types(linux/unix) to effectively manage them




 How many types of file are there in Linux/Unix?

By default Unix have only 3 types of files. They are..

1       Regular files
2       Directory files
3       Special files(This category is having 5 sub types in it.)

  •       Regular Files

Used to store your information, such as some text you have written or an image you have drawn. This is the type of file that you usually work with.
Always located within/under a directory file
Do not contain other files
  • Directories

Branching points in the hierarchical tree
Used to organize groups of files
May contain ordinary files, special files or other directories
Never contain "real" information which you would work with (such as text). Basically, just used for organizing files.
All files are descendants of the root directory, ( named / ) located at the top of the tree.
  •  Special Files

 1      Block file(b)
 2     Character device file(c)
 3     Named pipe file or just a pipe file(p)
 4      Symbolic link file(l)
 5      Socket file(s)

Used to represent a real physical device such as a printer, tape drive or terminal, used for Input/Ouput (I/O) operations
Unix considers any device attached to the system to be a file - including your terminal:
  •   By default, a command treats your terminal as the standard input file (stdin) from which to read its input
  •  Your terminal is also treated as the standard output file (stdout) to which a command's output is sent
  •   Stdin and stdout will be discussed in more detail later

Two types of I/O: character and block
Usually only found under directories named /dev
  • Pipes

UNIX allows you to link commands together using a pipe. The pipe acts a temporary file which only exists to hold data from one command until it is read by another

For example, to pipe the output from one command into another command:

      who | wc -l


This command will tell you how many users are currently logged into the system. The standard output from the who command is a list of all the users currently logged into the system. This output is piped into the wc command as its standard input. Used with the -l option this command counts the numbers of lines in the standard input and displays the result on its standard output - your terminal.





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