III. THE FILE SYSTEM (excerpt from pages 1907-1910)
3.1. Ordinary files
A file contains whatever information the user places on it, for example, symbolic or binary (object) programs. No particular structuring is expected by the system. A file of text consists simply of a string of characters, with lines demarcated by the newline character. Binary programs are sequences of words as they will appear in core memory when the program starts executing. A few user programs manipulate files with more structure, for example, the assembler generates, and the loader expects, an object file in a particular format. However, the structure of files is controlled by the programs that use them, not by the system
3.2 Directories
Directories provide the mapping between the names of files and the files themselves, and thus induce a structure on the file system as a whole. Each user has directory of his own files; he may also create subdirectories to contain groups of files conveniently treated together. A directory behaves exactly like an ordinary file except that it cannot be written on by unprivileged programs, so that the system controls the contents of directories. However, anyone with appropriate permission may read a directory just like any other file.
The system maintains several directories for its own use. One of these is the root directory. All files in the system can be found by tracing a path through a chain of directories until the desired file is reached. The starting point for such searches is often the root. Other system directories contain all the programs provided for general use; that is, all the commands. As will be seen, however, it is by no means necessary that a program reside in one of these directories for it to be executed.
Files are named by sequences of 14 or fewer characters. When the name of a file is specified to the system, it may be in the form of a path name, which is a sequence of directory names separated by a slashes, "/", and ending in a file name. If the sequence begins with slash, the search begins in the root directory. The name /alpha/beta/gamma causes the system to search the root for directory alpha, then to search alpha for beta, finally to find gamma in beta. gamma may be an ordinary file, a directory, or a special file. As a limiting case, the name "/" refers to the root itself.
A path name not starting with "/" causes the system to begin the path search in the user's current directory. Thus, the name alpha/beta specifies the file named beta in subdirectory alpha of the current directory, The simplest kind of name, for example, alpha, refers a file that itself is found in the current directory. As another limiting case, the null file name refers to the current directory.
The same non-directory file may appear in several directories under possibly different names. This feature is called linking; a directory entry for a file is sometimes called a link. The UNIX system differs from other systems in which linking is permitted in that all links to a file have equal status. That is, a file does not exist within a particular directory; the directory entry for a file consists merely of its name and a pointer to the information actually describing the file. Thus a file exists independently of any directory entry, although in practice a file is made to disappear along with the last link to it.
Each directory always has at least two entries. The name "." in each directory refers to the directory itself. Thus a program may read the current directory under the name "." without knowing its complete path name. The name ".." by convention refers to the parent of the directory in which it appears, that is, to the directory in which it was created.
The directory structure is constrained to have the form of a rooted tree. Except for the special entries "." and ".. ", each directory must appear as an entry in exactly one other directory, which is its parent. The reason for this is to simplify the writing of programs that visit subtrees of the directory structure, and more important, to avoid the separation of portions of the hierarchy. If arbitrary links to directories were permitted, it would be quite difficult to detect when the last connection from the root to a directory was severed.
3.3 Special files
Special files constitute the most unusual feature of the UNIX file system. Each supported I/O device is associated with at least one such file. Special files are read and written just like ordinary disk files, but requests to read or write result in activation of the associated device. An entry for each special file resides in directory /dev, although a link may be made to one of these files just as it may to an ordinary file. Thus, for example, to write on a magnetic tape one may write on the file /dev/mt. Special files exist for each communication line, each disk, each tape drive, and for physical main memory. Of course, the active disks and the memory special file are protected from indiscriminate access.
IV. IMPLEMENTATION OF THE FILE SYSTEM (excerpt from pages 1913-1914)
As mentioned in Section 3.2 above, a directory entry contains only a name for the associated file and a pointer to the file itself. This pointer is an integer called the i-number (for index number) of the file. When the file is accessed, it i-number is used as an index to a system table (the i-list) stored in a known part of the device on which the directory resides. The entry found thereby (the file's i-node) contains the description of the file:
(i) the user and group-ID of its owner (ii) its protection bits (iii) the physical disk or tape addresses for the file contents (iv) its size (v) time of creation, last use, and last modification (vi) the number of links to the file, that is, the number of times it appears in a directory (vii) a code indicating whether the file is a directory, an ordinary file, or a special file.
The purpose of an open or create system call is to turn the path name given by the user into an i-number by searching the explicitly or implicitly named directories. Once a file is open, its device, i-number, and read/write pointer are stored in a system table indexed by the file descriptor returned by the open or create. Thus, during a subsequent call to read or write the file, the descriptor may be easily related to the information necessary to access the file.
When a new file is created, an i-node is allocated for it and a directory entry is made that contains the name of the file and the i-node number. Making a link to an existing file involves creating a directory entry with the new name, copying the i-number from the original file directory entry, and incrementing the link-count field of the i-node. Removing (deleting) a file is done by decrementing the link-count of the i-node specified by its directory entry and erasing the directory entry. If the link-count drops to 0, any disk blocks in the file are freed and the i-node is de-allocated.
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