Linux Tutorial - 3. More About Files

Introduction

After the previous section I'm sure you're keen and eager to get stuck into some more commands and start doing some actual playing about with the system. We will get to that shortly but first we need to cover some theory so that when we do start playing with the system you can fully understand why it is behaving the way it is and how you can take the commands you learn even further. That is what this section and the next intend to do. After that it will start getting interesting, I promise.

Everything is a File

Ok, the first thing we need to appreciate with linux is that under the hood, everything is actually a file. A text file is a file, a directory is a file, your keyboard is a file (one that the system reads from only), your monitor is a file (one that the system writes to only) etc. To begin with, this won't affect what we do too much but keep it in mind as it helps with understanding the behaviour of Linux as we manage files and directories.

Linux is an Extensionless System

This one can sometimes be hard to get your head around but as you work through the sections it will start to make more sense. A file extension is normally a set of 2 - 4 characters after a full stop at the end of a file, which denotes what type of file it is. The following are common extensions:

• file.exe - an executable file, or program.
• file.txt - a plain text file.
• file.png, file.gif, file.jpg - an image.

In other systems such as Windows the extension is important and the system uses it to determine what type of file it is. Under Linux the system actually ignores the extension and looks inside the file to determine what type of file it is. So for instance I could have a file myself.png which is a picture of me. I could rename the file to myself.txt or just myself and Linux would still happily treat the file as an image file. As such it can sometimes be hard to know for certain what type of file a particular file is. Luckily there is a command called file which we can use to find this out.

file [path]

Now you may be wondering why I specified the command line argument above as path instead of file. If you remember from the previous section, whenever we specify a file or directory on the command line it is actually a path. Also because directories (as mentioned above) are actually just a special type of file, it would be more accurate to say that a path is a means to get to a particular location in the system and that location is a file.

Linux is Case Sensitive

This is very important and a common source of problems for people new to Linux. Other systems such as Windows are case insensitive when it comes to referring to files. Linux is not like this. As such it is possible to have two or more files and directories with the same name but letters of different case.

Linux sees these all as distinct and separate files.

Also be aware of case sensitivity when dealing with command line options. For instance with the command ls there are two options s and S both of which do different things. A common mistake is to see an option which is upper case but enter it as lower case and wonder why the output doesn't match your expectation.

Spaces in names

Spaces in file and directory names are perfectly valid but we need to be a little careful with them. As you would remember, a space on the command line is how we seperate items. They are how we know what is the program name and can identify each command line argument. If we wanted to move into a directory called Holiday Photos for example the following would not work.

What happens is that Holiday Photos is seen as two command line arguments. cd moves into whichever directory is specified by the first command line argument only. To get around this we need to identify to the terminal that we wish Holiday Photos to be seen as a single command line argument. There are two ways to go about this, either way is just as valid.

Quotes

The first approach involves using quotes around the entire item. You may use either single or double quotes (later on we will see that there is a subtle difference between the two but for now that difference is not a problem). Anything inside quotes is considered a single item.

Escape Characters

Another method is to use what is called an escape character, which is a backslash ( \ ). What the backslash does is escape (or nullify) the special meaning of the next character.

In the above example the space between Holiday and Photos would normally have a special meaning which is to separate them as distinct command line arguments. Because we placed a backslash in front of it, that special meaning was removed.

Hidden Files and Directories

Linux actually has a very simple and elegant mechanism for specifying that a file or directory is hidden. If the file or directory's name begins with a . (full stop) then it is considered to be hidden. You don't even need a special command or action to make a file hidden. Files and directories may be hidden for a variety of reasons. Configuration files for a particular user (which are normally stored in their home directory) are hidden for instance so that they don't get in the way of the user doing their everyday tasks.

To make a file or directory hidden all you need to do is create the file or directory with it's name beginning with a . or rename it to be as such. Likewise you may rename a hidden file to remove the . and it will become unhidden. The command ls which we have seen in the previous section will not list hidden files and directories by default. We may modify it by including the command line option -a so that it does show hidden files and directories.

In the above example you will see that when we listed all items in our current directory the first two items were . and .. If you're unsure what these are then you may wish to have a read over our previous section on Paths.

Summary

Activities

Right, now let's put this stuff into practice. Have a go at the following:

• Try running the command file giving it a few different entries. Make sure you use a variety of absolute and relative paths when doing this.
• Now issue a command that will list the contents of your home directory including hidden files and directories.