Oisks, Drives, Fi[es and Directories
The main part of a filename consists of up to eight characters - you can
use letters and numbers and some punctuation marks. lt is helpiul if the
name indicates what information the file contains. For example,
ANN_MEMO or FEBFIGS or CLASS4.
It doesn't matter if you type the name in lower case letters or in capitals,
as lower case characters are automatically converted to capitals. li must
not include spaces.
Filenames cannot be AUX, PBN, COMA, COMB, LPT1, LPT2, LpT3, CON, NUL,
clocK$, coMl or coM2 as MS-Dos reserves these lor its own use. This rure
applies whalever the exlension, For example, you cannol use AUX.TXT.
The extension is usually chosen for you by applications, and consists of
up to three letters which follow a f ull stop. lt describes the type of f ile so
that you or the computer can recognize it and treat it in an appropriate
way; for example, files with names ending .EXE, .COM or .BAT contain
programs which the computer can "run" or "execute". (Note that in
directory listings, the extensions are shown in a separate column
without fullstops.)
Wildcards
Wildcards are the characters * or ? in a filename or extension. ?
represents any single character within a name, and ' represents any
number of characters - usually the whole main part or extension of a
filename.
-.* represents all the files in a directory: it is useful for copying files, but be careful
with it when you are deleting lhem!
Directories
Files on disks are stored in groups known as directories.
Each disk containing files has at least one directory, called the root
directory - its symbol is \. The root directory may contain subdirectories,
and these can contain furlher suMirectories, and so on. Below is a
diagram of one simple directory structure.
