drwxr-xr-x 12 rshimons users 1208 Sep 2 13:37 . UNIXBasics·AppendixA 439 rshimonski@BEAST:~> Working with and navigating around the directory structure and UNIX-based system hierarchy is not really that difficult. It just takes a little knowledge and patience. Now let's look at the file structure. UNIX File Basics In this section, we look at the basics of UNIX-based files and how to work with them. There are a few important things you should remember about working with the file system. First, you should know that an inode is a data structure used by the file system to uniquely represent a file and its associated attributes. An inode contains the file type (for example, plain file, directory, symbolic link, or device file); its owner, group, and public access permis- sions; the owner and group ID numbers; its size in bytes; the number of links (directory references) to the file; and the last access and last modification file times. In addition, there is a list of data blocks claimed by the file. It is critical that you understand the basics of an inode when learning the UNIX system. Other items to note are: UNIX file systems will support long filenames (more than eight characters and