Editing File system (section)

=== Directories ===

{{Main|Directory (computing)}}

File systems typically support organizing files into '''directories''', also called '''folders''', which segregate files into groups.

This may be implemented by associating the file name with an index in a [[table of contents]] or an [[inode]] in a [[Unix-like]] file system.

Directory structures may be flat (i.e. linear), or allow hierarchies by allowing a directory to contain directories, called subdirectories.

The first file system to support arbitrary hierarchies of directories was used in the [[Multics]] operating system.<ref>{{cite conference|chapter-url=http://www.multicians.org/fjcc4.html|chapter=A General-Purpose File System For Secondary Storage|author=R. C. Daley|author2=P. G. Neumann|title=Proceedings of the November 30--December 1, 1965, fall joint computer conference, Part I on XX - AFIPS '65 (Fall, part I) |year=1965|conference=Fall Joint Computer Conference|publisher=[[AFIPS]]|pages=213–229|doi=10.1145/1463891.1463915|access-date=2011-07-30|doi-access=free}}</ref> The native file systems of Unix-like systems also support arbitrary directory hierarchies, as do, [[Apple Inc.|Apple]]'s [[Hierarchical File System (Apple)|Hierarchical File System]] and its successor [[HFS Plus|HFS+]] in [[classic Mac OS]], the [[File Allocation Table|FAT]] file system in [[MS-DOS]] 2.0 and later versions of MS-DOS and in [[Microsoft Windows]], the [[NTFS]] file system in the [[Windows NT]] family of operating systems, and the ODS-2 (On-Disk Structure-2) and higher levels of the [[Files-11]] file system in [[OpenVMS]].

{{Anchor|METADATA}}