Chapter 18. Directories and Links

In this chapter, we conclude our discussion of file-related topics by looking at directories and links. After an overview of their implementation, we describe the system calls used to create and remove directories and links. We then look at library functions that allow a program to scan the contents of a single directory and to walk through (i.e., examine each file in) a directory tree.

Each process has two directory-related attributes: a root directory, which determines the point from which absolute pathnames are interpreted, and a current working directory, which determines the point from which relative pathnames are interpreted. We look at the system calls that allow a process to change both of these attributes.