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Files

Files are the most common method of organizing the external storage of data. The most general definition of a file is a named collection of data. This definition of a file is ambigious because it can be applied to many things than files (such as a data base, object, or device). Some file systems use this generality to apply the file system calls to things other than ordinary files.

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Some operating systems (such as UNIX) treat all files as a stream of bits or a stream of bytes. Other operating systems provide more sophisticated interpretations of files. Most mainframe operating systems offer both a stream of bytes approach and various indexed approaches. Some operating systems provide data base like access to specific records and data stored in files, while other operating systems leave this capability to specialized data base management software. Some operating systems provide services for certain kinds of files (such as multimedia interpretations of music and video, word processing interpretations of text documents, etc.). The Macintosh provides a Resource Manager, which separates executable code from supporting resources, allowing developers to add new translations and other internationalization without having to recompile the underlying program.

See the chart on file systems used by various operating systems.

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