Scribd
Upload
9 views9 pages

Chapter 5

Uploaded by

Negera Kal
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
9 views9 pages

Chapter 5

Uploaded by

Negera Kal
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 9

compiled by Nagara K.

CHAPTER FIVE
FILE
MANAGMENT

OS
FILE MANAGMENT
File

 A file is a named collection of related information that is


recorded on secondary storage such as magnetic disks,
magnetic tapes and optical disks.
 In general, a file is a sequence of bits, bytes, lines or records
whose meaning is defined by the files creator and user.

compiled by Nagara K. OS
File Structure

A File Structure should be according to a required format that the


operating system can understand.
 A file has a certain defined structure according to its type.
 A text file is a sequence of characters organized into lines.
 A source file is a sequence of procedures and functions.
 An object file is a sequence of bytes organized into blocks that
are understandable by the machine.
 When operating system defines different file structures, it also
contains the code to support these file structure.
 Unix, MS-DOS support minimum number of file structure.

compiled by Nagara K. OS
File Type

File type refers to the ability of the operating system to distinguish


different types of file such as text files source files and binary files
etc.
Many operating systems support many types of files.
 Operating system like MS-DOS and UNIX have the following
types of files −

compiled by Nagara K. OS
conti

1. Ordinary files
 These are the files that contain user information.
 These may have text, databases or executable program.
 The user can apply various operations on such files like add, modify, delete or
even remove the entire file.
2. Directory files
 These files contain list of file names and other information related to these files.
3. Special files
 These files are also known as device files.
 These files represent physical device like disks, terminals, printers, networks, tape
drive etc.
These files are of two types −
 Character special files − data is handled character by character as in case of
terminals or printers.
 Block special files − data is handled in blocks as in the case of disks and tapes.

compiled by Nagara K. OS
File Access Mechanisms

File access mechanism refers to the manner in which the records of


a file may be accessed. There are several ways to access files −
 Sequential access
 Direct/Random access
 Indexed sequential access
Sequential access
 A sequential access is that in which the records are accessed in
some sequence, i.e., the information in the file is processed in
order, one record after the other. This access method is the most
primitive one. Example: Compilers usually access files in this
fashion.

compiled by Nagara K. OS
Direct/Random access

 Random access file organization provides, accessing the


records directly.
 Each record has its own address on the file with by the help of
which it can be directly accessed for reading or writing.
 The records need not be in any sequence within the file and
they need not be in adjacent locations on the storage medium.

compiled by Nagara K. OS
Indexed sequential access

This mechanism is built up on base of sequential access.


 An index is created for each file which contains pointers to
various blocks.
 Index is searched sequentially and its pointer is used to access
the file directly.

compiled by Nagara K. OS
End of slides

compiled by Nagara K. OS

You might also like