When you work with UNIX, one way or another you spend most of your time working with files. How are devices represented in UNIX? What are links and symbolic links in UNIX file system?
When you work with UNIX, one way or another you spend most of your time working with files. How are devices represented in UNIX? What are links and symbolic links in UNIX file system?
There are three basic file types in UNIX: the ordinary files, the directories, and the special files. The devices are represented by special files in UNIX. These special files are found in in/dev directory. Device files as well as other files are accessed in the same way. A “block special file” is the one that represents a device with a characteristic similar to disk while a “character” special file” represents a device with characteristics similar to a keyboard. This means that in the block special file the data transfer is in terms of blocks and in the character special file the data transfer is by stream of bits in sequential order. Symbolic links refers to a symbolic path indicating the abstract location of another file while the other that you might want to know is the hard link, which points out the specific location of a physical data.
