A file is simply a container into which you can put data. The most important aspect of a file is that it has a name which you have allocated to it. The contents of a file can be displayed, copied, and removed from the system.

A directory is a file containing information about other files and directories. A directory contained within another directory is called a subdirectory, and each subdirectory can itself contain files and more subdirectories. Following figure shows file system hierarchy.