Editing File system (section)

===Flat file systems===
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{{distinguish|Flat file database}}
In a flat file system, there are no [[subdirectory|subdirectories]]; directory entries for all files are stored in a single directory.

When [[floppy disk]] media was first available this type of file system was adequate due to the relatively small amount of data space available. [[CP/M]] machines featured a flat file system, where files could be assigned to one of 16 ''user areas'' and generic file operations narrowed to work on one instead of defaulting to work on all of them. These user areas were no more than special attributes associated with the files; that is, it was not necessary to define specific [[Disk quota|quota]] for each of these areas and files could be added to groups for as long as there was still free storage space on the disk. The early [[Apple Macintosh]] also featured a flat file system, the [[Macintosh File System]]. It was unusual in that the file management program ([[Macintosh Finder]]) created the illusion of a partially hierarchical filing system on top of EMFS. This structure required every file to have a unique name, even if it appeared to be in a separate folder. [[IBM]] [[DOS/360]] and [[OS/360]] store entries for all files on a disk pack (''volume'') in a directory on the pack called a ''[[Volume Table of Contents]]'' (VTOC).

While simple, flat file systems become awkward as the number of files grows and makes it difficult to organize data into related groups of files.

A recent addition to the flat file system family is [[Amazon.com|Amazon]]'s [[Amazon S3|S3]], a remote storage service, which is intentionally simplistic to allow users the ability to customize how their data is stored. The only constructs are buckets (imagine a disk drive of unlimited size) and objects (similar, but not identical to the standard concept of a file). Advanced file management is allowed by being able to use nearly any character (including '/') in the object's name, and the ability to select subsets of the bucket's content based on identical prefixes.