File Types in Linux

In Linux everything is a file but not all the files are of the same type. There are seven basic types of file types in Linux.

Regular file (-)  

Directory (d) 

Symbolic Link (l)

Character Device (c)

Block Device (b)

Socket files (s)

Named Pipe (p)

You can use the “ls -l” command to see the various types of files. The first character shows the file type.

File Types in Linux

Regular file

Symbol: -                       Color: White

These are indicated with "-" and the following file

1. Readable file

2. A binary file

3. Image files

4. Compressed files

You can create the regular file using the command touch or vi or redirection operators.

Directory file

Symbol: d                            Color: Blue

These are regular files, folders or special files stored on a physical device. 

You can create Directory files using mkdir command.

Symbolic link files

Symbol: l              Color: Cyan

Symbolic links are special files that point to either another file or to a directory. The inode number for this file and its parent files are same. There are two types of symbolic link soft link and hard link.

Symbolic link files can be created by ln command.

Character device files

Symbol: c                    Color: Yellow

Character Devices are files where data is a stream of bytes i.e. the input/output happens byte by byte.

Examples of these files are terminal, keyboard.

Character device files can be created by mknod command.

Block Device File

Symbol: b                    Color: Yellow

Block Devices are devices, as the name suggests, deal with blocks of data. Therefore, block device drivers are implemented to read/write block data and also supports random access data.

Block Device files can be created by mknod command.

Socket files

Symbol: s                              Color: Purple

A socket file is used for inter-process communication between applications.

Socket files can be created using socket() system call by C programming.

Named Pipe files

Symbol: p                             Color: Red

A special type of file that acts more or less like sockets and form a way for processes to communicate with each other. It is also called FIFO (First In - First Out) means that the order of bytes going in is the same coming out.

Named files can be created using mkfifo command.

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