Directory Operations

Operations that can be performed on a directory include :

• Open/Close a directory
• find a file in directory using a pattern (wildcards etc)
• Create/Delete : how do we deal with non-empty directories ?
• Link/Unlink : An indirection across directory structure
• Change directories : Move across directory structures
• List : files present within a directory
• Attributes : Read attributes of a file or change them (protection information) - in Unix - the sticky bit

Need to traverse directory structure for archiving (backups), a useful command in unix :

find . -name 'something_nice' -print

or something more complex :
Remove all files in your home directory named a.out or * .o that have not been accessed for a week:

my_prompt% find $HOME \( -name a.out -o -name '*.o' \
	   -atime +7 \ -exec rm {} \;