iwm: Fix S:N reporting in ifconfig(8)
[dragonfly.git] / share / man / man5 / dir.5
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1.\" Copyright (c) 1983, 1991, 1993
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28.\" @(#)dir.5 8.3 (Berkeley) 4/19/94
29.\" $FreeBSD: src/share/man/man5/dir.5,v 1.12.2.5 2001/12/17 11:30:13 ru Exp $
44cb301e 30.\" $DragonFly: src/share/man/man5/dir.5,v 1.7 2006/05/26 19:39:40 swildner Exp $
984263bc 31.\"
d4e8e477 32.Dd March 5, 2005
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33.Dt DIR 5
34.Os
35.Sh NAME
36.Nm dir ,
37.Nm dirent
38.Nd directory file format
39.Sh SYNOPSIS
40.In dirent.h
41.Sh DESCRIPTION
42Directories provide a convenient hierarchical method of grouping
43files while obscuring the underlying details of the storage medium.
44A directory file is differentiated from a plain file
45by a flag in its
46.Xr inode 5
47entry.
48It consists of records (directory entries) each of which contains
49information about a file and a pointer to the file itself.
50Directory entries may contain other directories
51as well as plain files; such nested directories are referred to as
52subdirectories.
53A hierarchy of directories and files is formed in this manner
54and is called a file system (or referred to as a file system tree).
55.\" An entry in this tree,
56.\" nested or not nested,
57.\" is a pathname.
58.Pp
59Each directory file contains two special directory entries; one is a pointer
60to the directory itself
61called dot
62.Ql .\&
63and the other a pointer to its parent directory called dot-dot
64.Ql \&.. .
65Dot and dot-dot
66are valid pathnames, however,
67the system root directory
68.Ql / ,
69has no parent and dot-dot points to itself like dot.
70.Pp
71File system nodes are ordinary directory files on which has
72been grafted a file system object, such as a physical disk or a
73partitioned area of such a disk.
74(See
75.Xr mount 2
76and
77.Xr mount 8 . )
78.Pp
d4e8e477 79The directory entry format is defined in
44cb301e 80.In sys/dirent.h .
d4e8e477 81This file should not be included directly by applications.
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82.Sh SEE ALSO
83.Xr fs 5 ,
84.Xr inode 5
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85.Sh HISTORY
86A
87.Nm
88file format appeared in
89.At v7 .
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90.Sh BUGS
91The usage of the member d_type of struct dirent is unportable as it is
92.Dx Ns / Ns Fx Ns -specific .
93It also may fail on certain filesystems, for example the cd9660 filesystem.