Talk:Directory (computing)

Folder vs Directory

Can we get this moved to Directory instead of Folder? Folder presents an unpleasantly Windows-centric view of things and imo isn't technically correct. --ex-parrot (talk) 01:35, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

The term itself and the visual concept of "folders" are used by Windows, Apple, various Linux GUIs, cell phones, digital video recorders, SatNav and other electronic devices with GUIs that also have user storage. Folders are not at all Windows-centric but are a concept familiar to most users of electronic devices, far more so than "directory" which is a term mostly (and correctly) used by computing professionals and enthusiasts. Since everyone who understands the term "directory" also understands "folder" but not vice versa, so it makes sense for this to remain as Folder. Andymilli 15.56, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

The trouble with this page is that it starts by talking about folders, then moves to directories, then back to why they are referred to as folders. Directories are part of the structure of the file system hierarchy. Folders are representation of those directories expressed in a way that is generally easier for people to understand. The main focus of the page should be about the structural definition and description of the file system hierarchy, and should then be followed by an explanation of the current usage of 'folder' to simplify understanding of directories.Caleneledh (talk) 01:41, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

An example for a fact about directories that is unlikely to appear in a "folder" article: "." and ".." subdirectories. --2001:5C0:1000:A:0:0:0:198D (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 21:31, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Nevermind, this article is pretty broken. I'll fix it up properly later then move it. ex-parrot (talk) 01:38, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Question: Is there actually a maximum amount of data a 'folder' under a particular operating system can hold?

More information about directories (file systems) can be found in this old version of "directory". Specifically, information about folders appears to have been lost when the page was converted to disambiguation (I haven't been able to find those paragraphs back so far at least). Kim Bruning 13:49, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Does everyone like the move? If not, let's move it back! --Uncle Ed 17:14, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

"Thousands" seemed like a small number. Just counting files on my laptop alone, I found over 700K files, so updated to hundreds of thousands. --Kim Bruning 16:37, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

This article is awful

The true statement, with citations, that "In computing, a directory and a folder are the same thing" is surrounded by a bunch of uncited and baseless verbiage about how they're supposedly different. -- Jibal (talk) 10:38, 4 July 2018 (UTC)

Question

i want to know about direcory structure in unix

This page isn't for questions. -- Jibal (talk) 10:39, 4 July 2018 (UTC)

History

I really would like to know who first coined the "folder" metaphor. Was it originally Apple ? Or did they get it from Xerox PARC ? Maybe it was Susan Kare who thought of it when drawing the first files... —Preceding unsigned comment added by XApple (talk) 17:11, May 2, 2007 (UTC)

This page isn't for expressions of personal curiosity. Do some research and, if it bears fruit, add the information, with citations, to the article. -- Jibal (talk) 10:41, 4 July 2018 (UTC)

Collecting together some images from commons ...

, , ... um... no <- remove new? <- same here

I want to draw directory trees :-)

--Kim Bruning (talk) 23:39, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes pages like these could benefit from quickly understood images.talk 22:06, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Move to 'directory'

Might this page be better titled as "Directory (computing)"? If I recall correctly, directory was the original name in the hierarchical system. Scienceman123 talk 05:58, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Moved to "Directory (computing)". Scienceman123 talk 14:37, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

+1 to a move to where it belongs.KiloByte (talk) 22:43, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

It should be title "Directory"

This article is all messed up. It sounds like it was written by someone who had no idea what they were talking about, and because directory was the original term, it should the title of the article.

And there is NO difference between the two, at least originally meant. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Anikom15 (talk • contribs) 17:56, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

Amen to that. Obviously written by someone who is not conversant with the subject. BTW the correct term is directory, not "folder." The latter is Windows-speak for people who don't know anything about computer operating systems. 38.69.12.6 (talk) 05:50, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

Um, no. As the person you're saying "amen" to stated, there's no difference. Therefore it's nonsense talk about "the correct term" and to claim that "folder" is for people who don't know anything about computer systems ... quite ironic, since the people who invented the "desktop" metaphor and associated metaphors such as folders knew a great deal about computer systems. BTW, while a "directory" in the UNIX filesystem really is a directory that maps names to inode numbers, folders need not be implemented that way. -- Jibal (talk) 10:53, 4 July 2018 (UTC)

"Everything Is a File in Unix"

Reference 3 contains a broken link apparently to an article titled "Everything Is a File in Unix". I'm not familiar with the referenced article, but I wonder if this is it: http://www.bga.org/~lessem/psyc5112/usail/concepts/filesystems/everything-is-a-file.html. Not a huge deal, but I thought I'd bring it up in case anyone knows of a replacement link. (Googling on "everything is a file in unix" brings up lots of hits -- even with the enclosing quotes to force an exact search -- so it's hard to know if the referenced article is out there.) Peytonbland (talk) 21:42, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

"Folder" references

All uses of the word folder have been changed to the correct term, which is directory. The only instances of folder that weren't changed were those where the term is relevant. Bigdumbdinosaur (talk) 06:26, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

Well, let's be careful here. The technically most correct term is "file directory", since "directory" by itself can also be used to refer to things like "LDAP" and "catalog". The term "folder" is a recent invention, which if I'm not mistaken came first from the Apple/Mac world and was then later adopted by Microsoft/Windows. Personally, I would rather see "Folder (computing)" redirect to the page "Directory (computing)", in other words, have the layman's term redirect to the (more correct?) technical term. In any case, I'm not sure it's appropriate for an article named "Folder" to constantly avoid using the word "folder" itself in the text. — Loadmaster (talk) 15:47, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

Well, unlike the overwhelming majority of the folks who write things about computing on Wikipedia, I've been in the computing industry since the days of PDP-1s—since the days when we used Tele-Types to write code and Bill Gates was picking his nose as a freshman in high school. I have *never* heard the term "file directory" used by anyone except academics. Also, keep in mind that the term "directory" was in use long before things like LDAP came into being.

Indeed. For the record, I've been programming since the late 70s, so I, too, have seen quite a lot of computing history with my own eyes. Personally, I'd like to see more mention of the truly early computing concepts in WP computing articles, e.g. IBM S/360 and earlier hardware; too many articles seem to assume that computing began in 1981. — Loadmaster (talk) 17:46, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

I agree that your suggested redirect be put into place. However, I strongly disagree with using a "dumbed down" term like folder to describe what the industry has called a directory since the days of Multics (and even before).

The term "folder" is a recent invention, which if I'm not mistaken came first from the Apple/Mac world and was then later adopted by Microsoft/Windows.

The first use apparently was with the Apple Lisa. You have to understand more than a few Apple employees in those days had a relatively narrow view of the computing universe and had not been exposed to large scale systems. So rather than sticking with already established terminology standards, they made them up as they went. Much of the same nonsense occurred in the Commodore 8 bit world, where many of the would-be software writers didn't even know that PETSCII was an aberration of ASCII.

Bigdumbdinosaur (talk) 06:00, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

The comments above are grossly ignorant. Multics was not part of any "industry", and "folder" did not come about because people had not been exposed to large scale systems -- it was a very intentional result of a "desktop" metaphor that was widespread in "the industry". "folder" is not "dumbed down" -- that's dumb. There's nothing particularly "smart" about the term "directory", which itself is a metaphor for a mapping from names to numbers (inode numbers in the POSIX world). -- Jibal (talk) 11:09, 4 July 2018 (UTC)

As the article says, there is a difference between a directory, which is a file system concept, and the graphical user interface metaphor that is used to represent it (a folder). However it also said Strictly speaking (now removed), which is nonsense probably added by some Windows-speaker that did not know the difference. This article (Folder) should be moved to 'Directory', and 'Folder' should redirect to the section "The folder metaphor". In the meanwhile, I've corrected the beginning, now it does not incorrectly claim A directory, also referred to as a folder --151.75.122.123 (talk) 14:24, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

People like you should not be editing wikipedia ... your claims are OR, arrogant geek-biased, ignorant, and not supported by reliable sources. -- Jibal (talk) 11:09, 4 July 2018 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Move. Cúchullain ^t/c 14:55, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

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Folder (computing) → Directory (computing) – The consensus of opinion amongst the editors is that the page should be returned to Directory (computing) and that Folder (computing) should redirect to it. Directory is a file system concept, and folder is a graphical representation of that concept. Caleneledh (talk) 12:35, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

Survey

Feel free to state your position on the renaming proposal by beginning a new line in this section with *'''Support''' or *'''Oppose''', then sign your comment with ~~~~. Since polling is not a substitute for discussion, please explain your reasons, taking into account Wikipedia's policy on article titles.

• Support the more common form, used in more operating systems, over a longer period of time, and still used on the network backends in the modern day systems such as Windows, where at the command line, it's still called directories. And under OSX command line where it is also directories. -- 65.92.180.137 (talk) 22:23, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

• Support — Yep, it is directory (on most operating systems), whereas folder is a more recent term adopted to provide a more "user-friendly" concept for GUI operating systems (primarily Windows and MacOS). "Folder" is nothing more than the external term for the internal concept of "directory". Also, look at the operating system calls, e.g. GetCurrentDirectory(), getcwd(), DirectoryInfo, and so forth. — Loadmaster (talk) 05:46, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

• Support. The proper term is "directory". A "directory" is a grouping (or list) of particular files within a file system. A "folder" is merely a graphic representation of that listing. The files are no more "in" a directory than books are in a library's card catalog. MXocross (talk) 19:40, 18 March 2013 (GMT)

• Support per WP:COMMONNAME for the filing system term. Regardless of how many references there are to folder, the correct term is directory, and we shouldn't be a part of the dumbing down of such terminology still in current use. -- Trevj (talk) 20:20, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

• Support - I've stripped many old hard drives during the better part of the last 35+ years, and don't recall once ever having seen a file folders in any of them. All I've ever found are disk platters. (Now that I think of it, there _was_ that old failed IBM 2311 I once got hold of, but...) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.115.29.109 (talk) 21:11, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

Discussion

Any additional comments:

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Directories as files

While it is true that Unix treats directories as files, this is not generally true in other operating systems. It used to be possible to open a directory in Unix using the standard open() call (and this was actually done at times by early Unix utilities); however, this was never possible on, for instance, MS-DOS or MS Windows. So while it may be true that most file systems arrange the storage blocks occupied by directories and files in a similar fashion, this does not mean that operating systems treat them the same. — Loadmaster (talk) 16:50, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

The open() UNIX/Linux call doesn't differentiate between directories, ordinary files, named pipes, etc. Where differentiation comes into play is in the operations performed on open file descriptors—the kernel won't allow anything to write to a directory, for example. Incidentally, utilities such as ls and find continue to open directories. How else would they be able to read the contents therein?

Bigdumbdinosaur (talk) 04:38, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

Dumb question, dinosaur. ls and find use opendir, not open, and they use readdir, not read (not since UNIX V6) ... the latter would require them to know the directory format of every filesystem. (In Linux, readdir calls the getdents system call, which invokes filesystem-specific code to actually read the directory contents.) In fact, POSIX does not mandate that directories be implemented via file descriptors (as returned by open) at all. -- Jibal (talk) 11:23, 4 July 2018 (UTC)

Reference to "Organization and Retrieval of Records Generated In a Large-Scale Engineering Project"

I just read "Organization and Retrieval of Records Generated in a Large-Scale Engineering Project," which is cited by this Wikipedia page and refers to the file system that was used by the ERMA Mark I system in the late 1950s that processes bank checks. After reading the paper, I'm under the impression that this is not a digital file system that uses folders as a metaphor, but it's actually a physical filing system that uses physical Pendaflex and manila folders for storing paper records. The paper describes a hierarchical classification system for organizing various system records that is somewhat reminiscent of the classification systems used by libraries to organize books and other media. Thus, I believe that it is incorrect to state that this paper introduced the folder metaphor to digital file systems, since this paper describes a physical filing system. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mmcthrow (talk • contribs) 20:11, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

Catlogs?

I've just removed this:

catalogs (catalog was used on the Apple II, the Commodore 128 and some other early home computers as a command for displaying disk contents; the filesystems used by these did not support hierarchal directories)

There's no reference given to support any OS using 'catalogs' to refer to directories; and the rest is irrelevant. Snori (talk) 18:19, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

I know this comment is really old, but i am gonna answer anyways.. the first versions of some early personal computer operating systems had just one directory, the root directory (or the root directories in the case of DOS, considering drive letters). Windows still have some backwards compatibility with this, and it's the reason why you still to this day can not name files inside any directory "CON", "PRN", "AUX", et.c.. This is what "the catalogue" refers to, probably. For backwards compatibility Windows treats these special file names as being in every directory, since back then All directories was The root directory. · · · Omnissiahs hierophant (talk) 14:30, 29 April 2021 (UTC)

References

A folder is not a directory,

like the number of your apartment is not your full address. A directory is a path to a folder. For example c:\AA\BB\ is a directory, but BB is simply a folder. This is a very common misconception. Even in the official Python documentation you can find: "for root, dirs, files in os.walk('python/Lib/email'):", and some programmers may think that directories ("dirs") contain full paths to folders, while they do not. So, the correct version should be: "for root, folders, files in os.walk('python/Lib/email'):". As a programmer, I deal with directories and folders all the time. How is it that my programs work? ;-) 85.193.252.19 (talk) 11:38, 29 April 2021 (UTC)

AFAIK there is no widely adopted standard vocabulary for these kinds of things. Some operating systems, such as windows, even contradict themselves at times. POSIX seem to say that a directory is what you call a folder. Maybe it's just best to be clear at all times what is meant, or if you feel like it, maybe spend an hour on compiling a list of definitions from various standards and maybe write about it in the article. Z/OS have a particularly weird idea of these things, with datasets and whatnot, predating the use of "normal" file systems, and is still used today. · · · Omnissiahs hierophant (talk) 13:25, 29 April 2021 (UTC)

@Omnissiahs hierophant: Though English is very illogical and ambiguous, we should try to improve it. Sadly, we do nothing, and native English speakers mindlessly copy what they hear. I can tolerate all those ridiculous, illogical words and phrases as long they are not ambiguous. To me "often times, the reason is because (...)" sounds ridiculous but I understand the intended meaning. However, if somebody says "I only speak Chinese" I have no idea what he or she means because most native speakers never heard of misplaced modifiers. "I can only speak Chinese" means that I can't write in Chinese, while "I can speak only Chinese" means that Chinese is the only language I know. To me English is an easy to learn, worldwide but primitive language. The only thing we can do is use it as logically as possible. BTW, is Swedish as ambiguous a English? ;-) 85.193.252.19 (talk) 10:57, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

@85.193.252.19: The flesh is indeed weak. · · · Omnissiahs hierophant (talk) 19:41, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

@Omnissiahs hierophant: Yeah, though sometimes the spirit is willing. What flesh did you mean? It would be a puzzle even for native speakers. Was it poetry or a translation from Swedish? ;-) You probably meant the core of the language, didn't you? 85.193.252.19 (talk) 12:14, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

@85.193.252.19: I meant the human flesh. As in that we humans are not very formal! :) · · · Omnissiahs hierophant (talk) 01:38, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

References

Is diagram correct?

Is the diagram in the Overview section correct - showing File2 in two directories? Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 05:03, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

@85.193.252.19: It can be if the file is hard linked, so it appears in two directories. · · · Omnissiahs hierophant (talk) 05:48, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, I didn't know about hard linking. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 18:08, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

etymology of a directory in computing

I've asked about the etymology of the name "Directory" in computing terms on the Reference Desk, which has not had many answer apart from Lambian saying it was used in Multics in 1965.[1] Does anyone else has information on this. --Salix alba (talk): 20:01, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

"Inode/directory" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect Inode/directory has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2023 March 10 § Inode/directory until a consensus is reached. Onel5969 ^{TT me} 14:44, 10 March 2023 (UTC)