How many types of files are there in Linux
You will undoubtedly come across several file types when browsing the Linux file system. Regular files and directories are the most common and evident file formats. But with an additional five file types, the Linux operating system has more to provide in terms of file kinds. This brief essay will assist you in identifying each of the seven file formats found in the Linux operating system.
Following are the different types of files in the Linux Operating System.
- -: regular file
- d : directory
- c : character device file
- b : block device file
- s : local socket file
- p : named file
- |: symbolic link
What is a Regular File?
One kind of file kept in a file system is a regular file. The word "regular" is used to set it apart from other unique sorts of files.
Regular files make up the majority of files utilized directly by humans. Regular files include things like image files, text files, and executable files.
The kernel does an operation in accordance with the filesystem's rules when reading or writing data to a normal file. Writes, for example, might be journaled, postponed, or subject to other particular actions.
The most prevalent file type on a Linux system is a regular file, which can be created with the touch command as follows:
$ touch linuxcareer.com
$ ls -ld linuxcareer.com
-rw-rw-r—1 lubos lubos 0 Jan 7 12:50 linuxcareer.comThe initial character of the ls command, in this example "-," stands for the regular file's identifying code. The rm command can be used to delete a common file:
$ rm linuxcareer.com
$Differences between how UNIX and other operating systems handle regular files and directories.
Regular Files
Anything that does not belong to the unique file types we will discuss below is a regular file. All regular files under UNIX are kept as collections of bytes. UNIX does not distinguish between text files and binary files, in contrast to several other operating systems. Furthermore, with UNIX, file "extensions" are meaningless. The management of all filename extensions follows convention. For instance, the majority of C compilers require programs to have the file.c file extension, yet the operating system does not give.c files any special treatment. Various file extensions, including file.tar.gz, are possible.
Directories
A directory file includes a list of all the files it contains. As we've seen, directory files are identified in ls -l listings by a d in the string's first place (for example, drwxr-xr-x).
The two types of files you will work with the most frequently are normal files and directories, which is why we have focused on them thus far in this course. However, because of the UNIX "anything is a file" tenet, there are numerous other objects that resemble files but differ in some important ways.
Regular Files are of how many types?
Regular Files are of two types that are text files and binary files.
1) Text Files
Text files are common files that are viewable by users and store data in ASCII text format. These files can be printed and displayed. A text file's lines cannot contain NUL characters and cannot be longer than LINE MAX bytes, including the newline character.
Incorporating command or other nonprintable characters into a text file is not prohibited by the term text (other than NUL). As a result, common tools that specify text files as outputs or inputs can either handle special characters or explicitly state their limitations in each section where they apply.
2) Binary Files
Regular files called "binary files" contain data usable by computers. Binary files may include executable code that directs the system to carry out a task. Executable, binary files are where commands and programs are kept. Binary code is produced from ASCII text using specialized compilation software. The main distinction between text and binary files is that text files have lines with a length of less than LINE MAX bytes, no NUL characters, and a newline character at the end of each line.
How file types are declared in Linux Operating System?
File types in the Linux kernel are listed in the header file sys/stat.h. Each Linux file type's type name, symbolic name, and bitmask are mentioned below.
| Type Name | Symbolic Name | Bitmask |
| Regular file | S_IFREG | 0100000 |
| Directory | S_IFDIR | 0040000 |
| Character device | S_IFCHR | 0020000 |
| Block special device | S_IFBLK | 0060000 |
| Socket | S_IFSOCK | 0140000 |
| FIFO (named pipe) | S_IFIFO | 0010000 |
| Symbolic link | S_IFLNK | 0120000 |