File System Object

Nix uses a simplified model of the file system, which consists of file system objects. Every file system object is one of the following:

• Regular File

  • A possibly empty sequence of bytes for contents
  • A single boolean representing the executable permission

• Directory

  Mapping of names to child file system objects

• Symbolic link

  An arbitrary string, known as the target of the symlink.

  In general, Nix does not assign any semantics to symbolic links. Certain operations however, may make additional assumptions and attempt to use the target to find another file system object.

  See the Wikpedia article on symbolic links for background information if you are unfamiliar with this Unix concept.

File system objects and their children form a tree. A bare file or symlink can be a root file system object.

Nix does not encode any other file system notions such as hard links, permissions, timestamps, or other metadata.

Examples of file system objects

A plain file:

50 B, executable: false

An executable file:

122 KB, executable: true

A symlink:

-> /usr/bin/sh

A directory with contents:

├── bin
│   └── hello: 35 KB, executable: true
└── share
    ├── info
    │   └── hello.info: 36 KB, executable: false
    └── man
        └── man1
            └── hello.1.gz: 790 B, executable: false

A directory that contains a symlink and other directories:

├── bin -> share/go/bin
├── nix-support/
└── share/