31 Input/output library [input.output]

Subclause [filesystems] describes operations on file systems and their components, such as paths, regular files, and directories.

A file system is a collection of files and their attributes.

A file is an object within a file system that holds user or system data.

Files can be written to, or read from, or both.

A file has certain attributes, including type.

File types include regular files and directories.

Other types of files, such as symbolic links, may be supported by the implementation.

A directory is a file within a file system that acts as a container of directory entries that contain information about other files, possibly including other directory files.

The parent directory of a directory is the directory that both contains a directory entry for the given directory and is represented by the dot-dot filename ([fs.path.generic]) in the given directory.

The parent directory of other types of files is a directory containing a directory entry for the file under discussion.

A link is an object that associates a filename with a file.

Several links can associate names with the same file.

A hard link is a link to an existing file.

Some file systems support multiple hard links to a file.

If the last hard link to a file is removed, the file itself is removed.

A symbolic link is a type of file with the property that when the file is encountered during pathname resolution ([fs.class.path]), a string stored by the file is used to modify the pathname resolution.