Directory

This article is about the computing terms. The Directory was also a government in revolutionary France from 1795 to 1799.

In computing, a directory, catalog, or folder, is a particular area of the file system used for organizing files in a filing system. The name folder is becoming more common usage on some operating systems, such as Mac OS and, increasingly, Microsoft Windows.

Strictly speaking, there is a difference between a directory which is a filing system concept, and the WIMP metaphor that is used to represent it (a folder).

Note that the folder metaphor may be misleading with regard to things like file permissions on UNIX: To rename or delete a file you need write permission to the directory that contains the file. This is perfectly understandable if the directory is seen as a list of filenames but not if it is seen as a container (as folder implies).

In graphical user interface (GUI) or WIMP environments, folders are often depicted with icons which resemble physical file folders such as those of a file cabinet in an office.

If you imagine the computer's file system as a file cabinet, high-level directories may be represented by the drawers, and low-level directories or "sub-directories" may be represented as file folders within the drawers. Operating systems like Microsoft Windows, MS-DOS, and UNIX support practically limitless levels of sub-directories (or folders within folders.)

In Linux and other Unix-like systems, directory structure is strictly defined by the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard.

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The word directory is used in computing with a different sense: a central repository of information related to management of a computer or a network of computers. This includes data on users, applications, hosts, network devices, security credentials and more. The directory, as opposed to a database, is heavily optimized for reading, with the assumption that data updates are very rare compared to data reads.

Currently (as of 2003) the prominent directory technology is LDAP, which is descended from the X.500 standard. Microsoft's implementation of LDAP is Active Directory.

The Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) is creating standards related to the information stored in such directories, and the protocols and APIs used to access it. The main product of these efforts is a common information model (CIM) for management.