File Management in Linux

In Linux, most of the operations are performed on files. And to handle these files
Linux has directories also known as folders which are maintained in a tree-like
structure. Though, these directories are also a type of file themselves. Linux has 3
types of files:
1. Regular Files: It is the common file type in Linux. it includes files like – text
files, images, binary files, etc. Such files can be created using the touch
command. They consist of the majority of files in the Linux/UNIX system. The
regular file contains ASCII or Human Readable text, executable program
binaries, program data and much more.
2. Directories: Windows call these directories as folders. These are the files
that store the list of file names and the related information. The root
directory(/) is the base of the system, /home/ is the default location for user’s
home directories, /bin for Essential User Binaries, /boot – Static Boot Files,
etc. We could create new directories with mkdir command.
3. Special Files: Represents a real physical device such as a printer which is
used for IO operations. Device or special files are used for device
Input/Output(I/O) on UNIX and Linux systems. You can see them in a file
system like an ordinary directory or file.
In Unix systems, there are two types of special files for each device, i.e. character
special files and block special files. For more details, read the article Unix file
system.

1. Files Listing

To perform Files listings or to list files and directories ls command is used

$ls

All your files and directories in the current directory would be listed and each type
of file would be displayed with a different color. Like in the output directories are
displayed with dark blue color.

$ls -l
It returns the detailed listing of the files and directories in the current directory. The
command gives os the owner of the file and even which file could be managed by
which user or group and which user/group has the right to access or execute which
file.

2. Creating Files

touch command can be used to create a new file. It will create and open a new
blank file if the file with a filename does not exist. And in case the file already exists
then the file will not be affected.
$touch filename

3. Displaying File Contents

cat command can be used to display the contents of a file. This command will
display the contents of the ‘filename’ file. And if the output is very large then we
could use more or less to fit the output on the terminal screen otherwise the
content of the whole file is displayed at once.
$cat filename

4. Copying a File

cp command could be used to create the copy of a file. It will create the new file in
destination with the same name and content as that of the file ‘filename’.
$cp source/filename destination/

5. Moving a File

mv command could be used to move a file from source to destination. It will

remove the file filename from the source folder and would be creating a file with the
same name and content in the destination folder.
$mv source/filename destination/

6. Renaming a File
mv command could be used to rename a file. It will rename the filename to
new_filename or in other words, it will remove the filename file and would be
creating a new file with the new_filename with the same content and name as that
of the filename file.
$mv filename new_filename

7. Deleting a File

rm command could be used to delete a file. It will remove the filename file from
the directory.
$rm filename

Finger command in Linux with Examples

Finger command is a user information lookup command which gives details of all
the users logged in. This tool is generally used by system administrators. It
provides details like login name, user name, idle time, login time, and in some
cases their email address even. This tool is similar to the Pinky tool but the Pinky
tool is just the lightweight version of this tool.

Installing finger User Information Lookup Tool

To install finger tool use the following commands as per your Linux distribution.
In case of Debian/Ubuntu
$sudo apt-get install finger
In case of CentOS/RedHat
$sudo yum install finger
In case of Fedora OS

$sudo dnf install finger

Working with finger User Information Lookup Tool

1. To finger or get details of a user.

$finger manav
Note: Here “manav” is the username.

As can be seen, it displays the login name, name, directory, shell, login time, email,
and plan of the user.
2. To get idle status and login details of a user.
$finger -s manav

As can be seen, it displays the idle status along with the details of the user.
3. To avoid printing PGP key, plan and project details
$finger -p manav

As can be seen, it displays the login name, name, directory, shell, login time, email,
but not the plan, PGP key, and project of the user.
4. To create a plan for a user.
$echo "Plan details" > ~/.plan

Now, after again using finger command it will display a plan for the user.
5. To create a project for a user.
$echo "Project details" > ~/.project
Now, after again using finger command it will display a project for the user.
6. To create a PGP key for a user.
$echo "pgpkey" > ~/.pgpkey

Now, after again using finger command it will display a PGP key

Unix File System

Unix file system is a logical method of organizing and storing large amounts of
information in a way that makes it easy to manage. A file is a smallest unit in which
the information is stored. Unix file system has several important features. All data
in Unix is organized into files. All files are organized into directories. These
directories are organized into a tree-like structure called the file system.
Files in Unix System are organized into multi-level hierarchy structure known as a
directory tree. At the very top of the file system is a directory called “root” which is
represented by a “/”. All other files are “descendants” of root.

Directories or Files and their description –

 / : The slash / character alone denotes the root of the filesystem tree.
 /bin : Stands for “binaries” and contains certain fundamental utilities, such
as ls or cp, which are generally needed by all users.
 /boot : Contains all the files that are required for successful booting
process.
 /dev : Stands for “devices”. Contains file representations of peripheral
devices and pseudo-devices.
 /etc : Contains system-wide configuration files and system databases.
Originally also contained “dangerous maintenance utilities” such as init,but
these have typically been moved to /sbin or elsewhere.
 /home : Contains the home directories for the users.
 /lib : Contains system libraries, and some critical files such as kernel
modules or device drivers.
  /media : Default mount point for removable devices, such as USB sticks,
media players, etc.
 /mnt : Stands for “mount”. Contains filesystem mount points. These are
used, for example, if the system uses multiple hard disks or hard disk
partitions. It is also often used for remote (network) filesystems, CD-
ROM/DVD drives, and so on.
 /proc : procfs virtual filesystem showing information about processes as
files.
 /root : The home directory for the superuser “root” – that is, the system
administrator. This account’s home directory is usually on the initial
filesystem, and hence not in /home (which may be a mount point for another
filesystem) in case specific maintenance needs to be performed, during which
other filesystems are not available. Such a case could occur, for example, if a
hard disk drive suffers physical failures and cannot be properly mounted.
 /tmp : A place for temporary files. Many systems clear this directory upon
startup; it might have tmpfs mounted atop it, in which case its contents do not
survive a reboot, or it might be explicitly cleared by a startup script at boot
time.
 /usr : Originally the directory holding user home directories,its use has
changed. It now holds executables, libraries, and shared resources that are
not system critical, like the X Window System, KDE, Perl, etc. However, on
some Unix systems, some user accounts may still have a home directory that
is a direct subdirectory of /usr, such as the default as in Minix. (on modern
systems, these user accounts are often related to server or system use, and
not directly used by a person).
 /usr/bin : This directory stores all binary programs distributed with the
operating system not residing in /bin, /sbin or (rarely) /etc.
 /usr/include : Stores the development headers used throughout the
system. Header files are mostly used by the #include directive in C/C++
programming language.
 /usr/lib : Stores the required libraries and data files for programs stored
within /usr or elsewhere.
 /var : A short for “variable.” A place for files that may change often –
especially in size, for example e-mail sent to users on the system, or process-
ID lock files.
 /var/log : Contains system log files.
 /var/mail : The place where all the incoming mails are stored. Users (other
than root) can access their own mail only. Often, this directory is a symbolic
link to /var/spool/mail.
 /var/spool : Spool directory. Contains print jobs, mail spools and other
queued tasks.
 /var/tmp : A place for temporary files which should be preserved between
system reboots.
Types of Unix files – The UNIX files system contains several different types of
files :
1. Ordinary files – An ordinary file is a file on the system that contains data, text,
or program instructions.
 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.
 In long-format output of ls -l, this type of file is specified by the “-” symbol.
2. Directories – Directories store both special and ordinary files. For users familiar
with Windows or Mac OS, UNIX directories are equivalent to folders. A directory
file contains an entry for every file and subdirectory that it houses. If you have 10
files in a directory, there will be 10 entries in the directory. Each entry has two
components.
(1) The Filename
(2) A unique identification number for the file or directory (called the inode number)
 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.
In long-format output of ls –l , this type of file is specified by the “d” symbol.
3. Special Files – Used to represent a real physical device such as a printer, tape
drive or terminal, used for Input/Output (I/O) operations. Device or special
files are used for device Input/Output(I/O) on UNIX and Linux systems. They
appear in a file system just like an ordinary file or a directory.
On UNIX systems there are two flavors of special files for each device, character
special files and block special files :
 When a character special file is used for device Input/Output(I/O), data is
transferred one character at a time. This type of access is called raw device
access.
 When a block special file is used for device Input/Output(I/O), data is
transferred in large fixed-size blocks. This type of access is called block
device access.
For terminal devices, it’s one character at a time. For disk devices though, raw
access means reading or writing in whole chunks of data – blocks, which are native
to your disk.
 In long-format output of ls -l, character special files are marked by the “c”
symbol.
 In long-format output of ls -l, block special files are marked by the “b”
symbol.
4. 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.A Unix pipe provides a one-way flow of data.The output or result of the first
command sequence is used as the input to the second command sequence. To
make a pipe, put a vertical bar (|) on the command line between two
commands.For example: who | wc -l
In long-format output of ls –l , named pipes are marked by the “p” symbol.

5. Sockets – A Unix socket (or Inter-process communication socket) is a special

file which allows for advanced inter-process communication. A Unix Socket is used
in a client-server application framework. In essence, it is a stream of data, very
similar to network stream (and network sockets), but all the transactions are local
to the filesystem.
In long-format output of ls -l, Unix sockets are marked by “s” symbol.
6. Symbolic Link – Symbolic link is used for referencing some other file of the file
system.Symbolic link is also known as Soft link. It contains a text form of the path
to the file it references. To an end user, symbolic link will appear to have its own
name, but when you try reading or writing data to this file, it will instead reference
these operations to the file it points to. If we delete the soft link itself , the data file
would still be there.If we delete the source file or move it to a different location,
symbolic file will not function properly.
In long-format output of ls –l , Symbolic link are marked by the “l” symbol (that’s a
lower case L).
Reference –
UNIX – Concepts and Applications | Sumitabha Das |Tata McGraw Hill |4th Edition
This article is contributed by Saloni Gupta . If you like GeeksforGeeks and would
like to contribute, you can also write an article
using contribute.geeksforgeeks.org or mail your article to
[email protected]. See your article appearing on the GeeksforGeeks
main page and help other Geeks.
Please write comments if you find anything incorrect, or you want to share more
information about the topic discussed above.
Don’t stop now and take your learning to the next level. Learn all the important
concepts of Data Structures and Algorithms with the help of the most trusted
course: DSA Self Paced. Become industry ready at a student-friendly price.

V Unix File System

Unix file system is a logical method of organizing and storing large amounts of
information in a way that makes it easy to manage. A file is a smallest unit in which
the information is stored. Unix file system has several important features. All data
in Unix is organized into files. All files are organized into directories. These
directories are organized into a tree-like structure called the file system.
Files in Unix System are organized into multi-level hierarchy structure known as a
directory tree. At the very top of the file system is a directory called “root” which is
represented by a “/”. All other files are “descendants” of root.
Directories or Files and their description –
 / : The slash / character alone denotes the root of the filesystem tree.
 /bin : Stands for “binaries” and contains certain fundamental utilities, such
as ls or cp, which are generally needed by all users.
 /boot : Contains all the files that are required for successful booting
process.
 /dev : Stands for “devices”. Contains file representations of peripheral
devices and pseudo-devices.
 /etc : Contains system-wide configuration files and system databases.
Originally also contained “dangerous maintenance utilities” such as init,but
these have typically been moved to /sbin or elsewhere.
 /home : Contains the home directories for the users.
 /lib : Contains system libraries, and some critical files such as kernel
modules or device drivers.
 /media : Default mount point for removable devices, such as USB sticks,
media players, etc.
 /mnt : Stands for “mount”. Contains filesystem mount points. These are
used, for example, if the system uses multiple hard disks or hard disk
partitions. It is also often used for remote (network) filesystems, CD-
ROM/DVD drives, and so on.
 /proc : procfs virtual filesystem showing information about processes as
files.
 /root : The home directory for the superuser “root” – that is, the system
administrator. This account’s home directory is usually on the initial
filesystem, and hence not in /home (which may be a mount point for another
filesystem) in case specific maintenance needs to be performed, during which
other filesystems are not available. Such a case could occur, for example, if a
hard disk drive suffers physical failures and cannot be properly mounted.
 /tmp : A place for temporary files. Many systems clear this directory upon
startup; it might have tmpfs mounted atop it, in which case its contents do not
survive a reboot, or it might be explicitly cleared by a startup script at boot
time.
 /usr : Originally the directory holding user home directories,its use has
changed. It now holds executables, libraries, and shared resources that are
not system critical, like the X Window System, KDE, Perl, etc. However, on
some Unix systems, some user accounts may still have a home directory that
is a direct subdirectory of /usr, such as the default as in Minix. (on modern
systems, these user accounts are often related to server or system use, and
not directly used by a person).
 /usr/bin : This directory stores all binary programs distributed with the
operating system not residing in /bin, /sbin or (rarely) /etc.
 /usr/include : Stores the development headers used throughout the
system. Header files are mostly used by the #include directive in C/C++
programming language.
 /usr/lib : Stores the required libraries and data files for programs stored
within /usr or elsewhere.
  /var : A short for “variable.” A place for files that may change often –
especially in size, for example e-mail sent to users on the system, or process-
ID lock files.
 /var/log : Contains system log files.
 /var/mail : The place where all the incoming mails are stored. Users (other
than root) can access their own mail only. Often, this directory is a symbolic
link to /var/spool/mail.
 /var/spool : Spool directory. Contains print jobs, mail spools and other
queued tasks.
 /var/tmp : A place for temporary files which should be preserved between
system reboots.
Types of Unix files – The UNIX files system contains several different types of
files :

1. Ordinary files – An ordinary file is a file on the system that contains data, text,
or program instructions.
 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.
 In long-format output of ls -l, this type of file is specified by the “-” symbol.
2. Directories – Directories store both special and ordinary files. For users familiar
with Windows or Mac OS, UNIX directories are equivalent to folders. A directory
file contains an entry for every file and subdirectory that it houses. If you have 10
files in a directory, there will be 10 entries in the directory. Each entry has two
components.
(1) The Filename
(2) A unique identification number for the file or directory (called the inode number)
 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.
In long-format output of ls –l , this type of file is specified by the “d” symbol.
3. Special Files – Used to represent a real physical device such as a printer, tape
drive or terminal, used for Input/Output (I/O) operations. Device or special
files are used for device Input/Output(I/O) on UNIX and Linux systems. They
appear in a file system just like an ordinary file or a directory.
On UNIX systems there are two flavors of special files for each device, character
special files and block special files :
 When a character special file is used for device Input/Output(I/O), data is
transferred one character at a time. This type of access is called raw device
access.
 When a block special file is used for device Input/Output(I/O), data is
transferred in large fixed-size blocks. This type of access is called block
device access.
For terminal devices, it’s one character at a time. For disk devices though, raw
access means reading or writing in whole chunks of data – blocks, which are native
to your disk.
 In long-format output of ls -l, character special files are marked by the “c”
symbol.
 In long-format output of ls -l, block special files are marked by the “b”
symbol.
4. 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.A Unix pipe provides a one-way flow of data.The output or result of the first
command sequence is used as the input to the second command sequence. To
make a pipe, put a vertical bar (|) on the command line between two
commands.For example: who | wc -l
In long-format output of ls –l , named pipes are marked by the “p” symbol.

5. Sockets – A Unix socket (or Inter-process communication socket) is a special

file which allows for advanced inter-process communication. A Unix Socket is used
in a client-server application framework. In essence, it is a stream of data, very
similar to network stream (and network sockets), but all the transactions are local
to the filesystem.
In long-format output of ls -l, Unix sockets are marked by “s” symbol.
6. Symbolic Link – Symbolic link is used for referencing some other file of the file
system.Symbolic link is also known as Soft link. It contains a text form of the path
to the file it references. To an end user, symbolic link will appear to have its own
name, but when you try reading or writing data to this file, it will instead reference
these operations to the file it points to. If we delete the soft link itself , the data file
would still be there.If we delete the source file or move it to a different location,
symbolic file will not function properly.
In long-format output of ls –l , Symbolic link are marked by the “l” symbol (that’s a
lower case L).
Reference –
UNIX – Concepts and Applications | Sumitabha Das |Tata McGraw Hill |4th Edition
This article is contributed by Saloni Gupta . If you like GeeksforGeeks and would
like to contribute, you can also write an article
using contribute.geeksforgeeks.org or mail your article to
[email protected]. See your article appearing on the GeeksforGeeks
main page and help other Geeks.
Please write comments if you find anything incorrect, or you want to share more
information about the topic discussed above.
Don’t stop now and take your learning to the next level. Learn all the important
concepts of Data Structures and Algorithms with the help of the most trusted
course: DSA Self Paced. Become industry ready at a student-friendly price.

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