Past exam of the year 1 of the computer science course of the University of Oxford / 2015 / Digital systems, linear algebra, introduction to formal proof (resit) / 1 / b

The file-system namespace is rooted at the root file-system directory. Each directory entry associates a local name with an inode number. To resolve a pathname, start at the root for an absolute pathname, or at the process's current file-system directory for a relative pathname, and look up successive components in successive file-system directories. A file-system directory is itself a file with a special interpretation for its data.

The inode table stores file metadata and the information locating contents. The file-system directory structure supplies names and the connections used in pathname lookup. Thus the file is the object represented by its inode, whereas a file name is one entry referring to that object. Two hard links can give the same file two names, possibly in different file-system directories. Renaming a file need not move its contents or change its inode number; after unlinking an open file, a file can temporarily have no names and still be accessible through an existing file descriptor.