Directory (computing)

In computing, a directory is a file system cataloging structure that contains references to other computer files, and possibly other directories. On many computers, directories are known as folders or drawers,^[1] analogous to a workbench or the traditional office filing cabinet. The name derives from books like a telephone directory that lists the phone numbers of all the people living in a certain area.

Files are organized by storing related files in the same directory. In a hierarchical file system (that is, one in which files and directories are organized in a manner that resembles a tree), a directory contained inside another directory is called a subdirectory. The terms parent and child are often used to describe the relationship between a subdirectory and the directory in which it is cataloged, the latter being the parent. The top-most directory in such a filesystem, which does not have a parent of its own, is called the root directory. In POSIX compliant operating systems the special files . (dot) and .. (dot-dot) are special files representing the current and current's parent directory respectively. The parent of root is circularly defined as itself.^[2]

The freedesktop.org media type for directories within many Unix-like systems – including but not limited to systems using GNOME, KDE Plasma 5, or ROX Desktop as the desktop environment – is "inode/directory".^[3] This is not an IANA registered media type.