I’ve googled it and still don’t really get what a directory is, a folder, an archive, a partition?
In: Technology
> In computing, a directory is a file system cataloging structure which contains references to other computer files, and possibly other directories. On many computers, directories are known as folders, or drawers,[1] analogous to a workbench or the traditional office filing cabinet.
Wikipedia has it better covered than I could phrase it.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directory_(computing)
It’s a location (i.e. a folder) in a hierarchical file storage system. That is, it represents a path to walk down from the root directory to that location.
It’s really just a way of referring to some location within the file storage system.
Folder = directory. Sometimes you use one word, sometimes the other.
A helpful, hopefully, overview of this is by starting with your ssd/hdd. Files, when stored to it, get placed whereever there is space. How do you find the files then? There is a special formatted “registry plate”, that gets put on to the disk, telling things like how big is the file, its name, where it is on the disk, etc.
So this registry plate is handy, because instead of arbitrarily long, as files can be, it has a fixed, short length. With every file on the hard disk reduced to this registry plate, we can discuss what to do with them. Directories are basically just special files that contain references to these registry plates. Directories are not really that different from ordinary files at lowest of levels. At higher level, you can however start specifying files not just by their registry plate, but by their location among directories.
To make this work, each partition has its own “base directory”. Windows calls the main partition C: and you find that base directory has directories like windows, users, program files etc.
To make it simple:
A real life example – where is your phone:
House->bedroom->closet->bottom drawer
In the non-computing sense, a directory helps you find what you’re looking for. It might be a phone book or a card catalog or a prompt where you spell the name of the person you’re trying to reach on the phone. It literally helps direct you to your destination/phone extension/book/file
Directories on your computer are folders or drawers depending on your system. They have a list of other folders and files that you could access, its this list portion that is really the directory.
Archives and partitions contain directories, but on a windows based system everything that has a list of files in it is a folder or a root directory (C: ) which still acts like a folder with none above it.
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