Understanding the File System interface

The file system interface enables you to use surrogate instances called file system entities to access physical objects that reside on hardware or virtual devices: volumes, directories, and files.

TFileSystemEntity, an abstract base class, defines the common protocol for file system entities. TVolume, TDirectory, and TFile are the concrete classes that derive from TFileSystemEntity, implementing protocols specific to each kind of entity.

You use file system entities to:

Locate physical objects
Delete physical objects
Initiate access
Access the physical object's metadata, also called properties

Each physical object of the file system has metadata associated with it. For example, every object (volume, directory, or file) has a name, creation date, modification date, size, and a type of file system entity. The file system stores and refers to this metadata as properties. Each type of object also has properties specific to its type--for example, only files have end-of-file markers.

To provide an easy way to access these properties, TFileSystemEntity implements the property store protocol of MPropertyStore. TDirectory, TVolume, and TFile further implement the protocol for properties that are specific to their corresponding physical file system objects.

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