Windows.XP.in.a.Nutshell.1002005.2Ed [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

2.8. Files, Folders, and Disks

Files
are the basic unit of long-term storage on a computer. Files are
organized into folders, which are stored on disks. (In DOS, Unix, and
earlier versions of Windows, folders were more often referred to as

directories , but both terms are
still used.) This section reviews fundamental filesystem concepts,
including file- and disk-naming conventions and file types.

2.8.1. Disk Names

Like every version of Windows that
preceded it, Windows XP retains the basic DOS disk-naming
conventions. Drives are differentiated by a single letter of the
alphabet followed by a colon:

A:

Represents the first "floppy"
(usually 3.5-inch) disk drive on the system

B:

Represents the second floppy disk drive, if present

C:

Represents the first hard disk drive or the first partition of
the first hard disk drive

D:

Often represents a CD-ROM drive, but can represent an
additional hard disk drive or other removable drive

E: - Z:

Represent additional hard disk drives, removable cartridges such as
Zip or Jaz drives, or mapped network drives

By default, driver letters are assigned consecutively, but
it's possible to change the drive letters for most
drives so that you can have a drive

N : without
having a drive

M :.

2.8.2. Pathnames

Folders

,
which contain files, are stored hierarchically on a disk and can be
nested to any arbitrary level.

The filesystem on any disk begins with the
root (top-level) directory, represented as a backslash. Thus

C:\ represents the

root directory on the

C : drive. Each additional nested directory is
simply listed after its "parent,"
with backslashes used to separate each one.
c:\Windows\System\Color means that the
Color folder is in the
System folder in the
Windows folder on the C:
drive. Thus, a

path
to any given folder can be expressed as a
single string of folder names.

A path can be absolute (always starting with a drive
letter) or relative (referenced with respect to the
current directory). The concept of a

current
directory
is somewhat obsolete in Windows XP,
with the exception of commands issued from the command prompt. Each
command prompt window has an active folder associated with it, to
which each command is directed. For example, if the current directory
is c:\windows, and you were to type
DIR (the directory listing command), you
would get a listing of the files in that folder. If you were to then
type CD cursors, the current directory would then
become c:\windows\cursors.

The fact that the entire, absolute path was not needed after the CD
command is an example of the use of a relative path.

A special type of relative path is made up of one or more dots. The
names . and
.. refer to the current directory and the parent
of that directory, respectively (c:\windows is
the parent folder of c:\windows\cursors, for
example). Type CD .. while in
c:\windows, and the current directory becomes
simply C:\. Use of additional dots (such
as ...) used in some previous versions of Windows
is not supported in Windows XP. The graphical equivalent of
.. is the yellow folder icon with the curved
arrow, found in common file dialogs.

The left pane in
Windows Explorer (by
default) contains a hierarchical tree-structured view of
the filesystem. The tree structure makes it easier to navigate
through all the folders on your system, since it provides a graphical
overview of the structure. See Chapter 3 for
more information on the tree and Chapter 4 for
more information on the Explorer application.

2.8.3. Paths to Network Resources

Files on any shared network
can be referred to via a
Universal Naming Convention
(UNC) pathname, which is very similar to a path (described in the
previous section). The first element of a UNC pathname is the name of
the computer or device that contains the file, prefixed by a double
backslash. The second element is the device's share
name. What follows is the string of folders leading to the target
folder or file.

For example, the UNC path
\\shoebox\o\hemp\adriana.txt refers to a file
named adrianna.txt, located in the
hemp folder, located on drive
O:, located on a computer named

shoebox . For more information on UNC pathnames
and sharing resources on a network, see Chapter 7.

2.8.4. Short Names and Long Names

DOS and Windows 3.1, the Microsoft
operating systems that preceeded Windows 95 and Windows NT, only
supported filenames with a maximum of eight characters, plus a
three-character file type extension (e.g.,
myfile.txt). The maximum length of any path was
80 characters (see "Pathnames,"
earlier in this chapter, for more information on paths). Legal
characters included any combination
of letters and numbers, extended ASCII characters with values greater
than 127, and the following punctuation characters:

$ % ^ ' ` - _ @ ~ ! ( ) # &

Spaces
were not allowed.

Windows XP supports long filenames (up to 260 characters), which can
include spaces as well as the additional punctuation characters:

$ % ^ ' ` - _ @ ~ ! ( ) # & + , ; = [ ] .

For example, a file could be named Picture of my
Niece.jpg, and could be located in a folder named
Family Photos. Furthermore, extensions are no
longer limited to 3 characters; for example,
l is perfectly valid (and distinctly
different from .htm). For more information on
file types and extensions, see the discussion in the next section,
and in Appendix F.

The maximum length of any path in Windows XP depends on the
filesystem you're using (NTFS, FAT32, etc.). For
more information on filesystems, see Appendix A.

Windows XP's
filesystem is case preserving, but also case insensitive. For
example, the case of a file named FooBar.txt
will be preserved with the capital F and B, but if you were to type
FOObar in a file open dialog box, Windows would
recognize it as the same file.

Long filenames are compatible with all modern versions of Windows,
but to maintain compatibilty with DOS programs and applications
written for Windows 3.x, Windows XP maintains a short counterpart to
every long filename. The short name consists of the first six letters
of the long name, a tilde, a
number from 1 to 9 (the number
is incremented to prevent two long filenames being linked to the same
short filename; after ~9, those six characters are reduced to five),
and the file type extension, if any. (If an extension is longer than
three characters, only the first three characters appear.) Any spaces
in the first six characters are removed.

The easiest way to investigate short filenames is to use the
command prompt (see
Chapter 6 for details). If, for example, you
had a file named Adriannal and you typed
DIR adrian~1,
you'd have a match. The same rules apply to
folder names: \Program
Files becomes \PROGRA~1. For the most
part, these short filenames are of little importance if you only use
applications that are long filename-aware, but they may come up, for
instance, if you share files with a user of an older computer.

2.8.5. File Types and Extensions

Most

files have a filename extension, the
(usually three) letters that appear after the last dot in any
file's name. Here are some common file extensions:

.xls

An Excel spreadsheet

.txt

A text file ( to be opened with Notepad)

l

A hypertext markup language file, commonly known as a web page

.jpg

A JPEG image file, used to store
photos

Although each of these files hold very different types of data, the
only way Windows differentiates them is by their filename extension.
How Windows is able to determine a given file's type
is important for several reasons, especially because it is the basis
for the associations that link documents with the applications that
created them. For example, when you double-click on a file named
donkeyl, Windows looks up the extension in
the Registry (see Chapter 8), and then, by
default, opens the file in your web browser. Rename the file to
donkey.jpg, and the association changes as well.
(The exception to this is a special, invisible link shared only by
Microsoft Office documents. If you rename an Office 2000 document
(say,

donkey.doc to

donkey.stubborn ) and double-click it, Windows
will still open it in Word. Unfortunately, this mechanism is not
available for any non-Office file types.)

The lesson here is that filename extensions are not a reliable guide
to a file's type, despite how heavily Windows XP
relies on them. What can make it even more frustrating is that known
filename extensions are hidden by Windows XP by default, but
unfamiliar extensions are shown. Rename
donkey.xyz (a unassociated extension) to
donkey.txt, and the extension simply disappears
in Explorer. Or, try to differentiate donkey.txt
from donkey.doc when the extensions are hidden.
To instruct Windows to show all extensions, go to Control Panel
Folder Options
View, and turn off the
"Hide file extensions for known file
types" option.

To see all the configured file extensions on your system, go to
Control Panel
Folder Options
File Types. More
information on file types can be found in Chapter 4. Appendix F contains a
list of common filename extensions and their descriptions.

2.8.6. Views Through Folder Windows

Double-click on a folder icon, and
you'll see the contents of the folder. Look at the
status bar (turn it on with the View menu
if it's absent) for summary information, such as the
number of items in the folder, the total size of the contents, and
the amount of free disk space.

Depending on your settings, the
icons may be shown in any of five
different formats:
Thumbnails,
Tiles, Icons, List, or
Details. If you're
looking at a folder full of images, the Thumbnails settings (in the
View menu) might be useful. The Icons setting resembles the way files
and folders are shown on the Desktop, but the Details view shows the
most information. To customize the columns in the Details view, use
View Choose Details.
Figure 2-8 shows the Details view of a folder.

Figure 2-8. Sort folder listings by clicking on column headers or change column widths by dragging boundaries between the headers

Windows XP will remember the view setting for each folder by default
and will display it the same way the next time the folder is opened.
(If a long time passes before you open a folder again, Windows will
forget its settings.) You can turn this setting off by going to
Control Panel Folder
Options View
Remember each
folder's view settings.

In addition to the icon styles, three other elements are of interest
in Folder Windows: the Explorer Bar, the Web View, and the
Explorer toolbar.

The first is the Explorer Bar, which usually contains the folder tree
(called simply Folders). If you press Ctrl-F or F3, the folder tree
disappears and a search box is put in its place. Use View
Explorer Bar to access
the other things that can appear in that pane, or to hide it
entirely. Note that the window icon changes to reflect the Explorer
Bar setting, implying that the primary function of the window has
changed. If you don't want the current state of the
window to change, say, when you want to search for a file,
you'll have to open a new folder window and search
from there.

The second element is what is commonly known as the
Web View, and in Windows XP, is
more specifically known as Web Content in Folders. The Web View,
first introduced in Windows 98, is intended to provide more
information than is normally available in a bare folder window.
Microsoft has changed the appearance and contents of the Web View in
each successive release of Windows, although it has never proven to
be especially useful. (For example, it provides little information
that isn't already available in the Details view.)
Unfortunately, the Web View in Windows XP is no different.

The "Common
Tasks" feature replaces the Web View pane found in
earlier versions of Windows, and can be turned on or off by going to
Control Panel
Folder Options and
selecting the "Show common tasks in
folders" or "Use Windows classic
folders" options, respectively. If the Common Tasks
pane is visible, you can collapse and expand the boxes by clicking on
the little arrows. Unlike the earlier Web View pane, however, the
Common Tasks pane is not customizable. Although there is a Customize
this Folder option in the Explorer View menu, it's
only used for changing the icon of the currently selected folder.

The third element is the Toolbar. The
Explorer Toolbar, like toolbars
in most applications, provides quick access to some of the more
frequently used features, all of which are otherwise accessible
through the menus and with keyboard accelerators. Enable, disable,
and customize the toolbar View
Toolbar. One of the
components in the Toolbar, the Address Bar, is most useful with
Internet Explorer, but can be of some use in ordinary folder windows.
For example, you can type the path to a folder, press Enter, and the
folder's contents will be shown in the current
window. This can often be faster than navigating with the folder tree
or using several consecutive folder windows. See Chapter 3 for details on using the Address Bar. Figure 2-9 shows the buttons on the Toolbar for a folder.

Figure 2-9. The Toolbar provides quick access to frequently used functions; the Status Bar shows additional information about selected icons

Although each new folder window you open will
appear with Microsoft's default settings,
it's possible to modify those defaults. Start by
configuring a folder according to your preferences: choose the icon
size, the sort order, etc. Then, go to Tools
Folder Options
View, and click Apply to
All Folders. The setting will then be used for each new single folder
window that is opened.

If you click Windows Explorer in the Start menu, you'll get a folder window with the folder tree shown in the left pane (as opposed to a folder window opened by double-clicking on a folder icon). This window is commonly referred to simply as Explorer, and although the right pane looks just like a single folder window without the tree pane, Windows XP treats them slightly differently. For example, if you use the Like Current Folder button in a single folder window, as described above, Windows will use your preferences for all single folder windows, but not for Explorer. Likewise, saved settings in Explorer aren't reflected in single folder windows. Because of this, you may feel like you have to jump through several hoops in order to set your preferences in all the windows you use; unfortunately, there's no easier way.

2.8.7. Keyboard Accelerators in Folder Windows

Some
keyboard accelerators are
especially useful in Explorer and folder windows. These are used in
addition to the various keys described in Section 2.2, earlier in this chapter.

• Hold the Alt key while double-clicking on a
  file or folder to view the Properties window for that object.

• Hold the Shift key while double-clicking on a
  folder to open an Explorer window (with the tree view) at that
  location. (Be careful when using this because Shift is also used to
  select multiple files. The best way is to select the file first.)

• Press Backspace in an open folder to go to
  the parent (containing) folder.

• Hold Alt while pressing the left cursor key to navigate to the
  previously viewed folder. Note that this is not necessarily the
  

  parent folder, but rather the last folder opened
  in Explorer. You can also hold Alt while pressing the right cursor
  key to move in the opposite direction (i.e., forward); this is
  similar to the Back and Next buttons in Internet Explorer,
  respectively. The Windows Explorer toolbar also has Back and Next
  buttons.

• Hold the Shift key while clicking on the close button (the
  x in the upper right corner of the window on the
  menu bar) to close

  all open folders that were
  used to get to that folder. (This, of course, makes sense only in the
  single-folder view and with the "Open each folder in
  its own window" option turned on.)

• Press Ctrl-A to quickly select all contents
  of a folder: both files and folders.

• In Explorer or any single-folder window,
  press a letter key to quickly jump to the first file or folder
  starting with that letter. Continue typing to jump further. For
  example, pressing the N key in your \Windows
  folder will jump to NetHood. Press N again to
  jump to the next object that starts with N. Or, press N and then
  quickly press O to skip all the Ns and jump to
  notepad.exe. If there's enough
  of a delay between the N and the O keys, Explorer will forget about
  the N, and you'll jump to the first entry that
  starts with O.

2.8.8. Advanced Drag-Drop Techniques

Some of the basics of
drag-drop are discussed in Section 2.2, earlier in this chapter,
but you can use some advanced techniques to have more control when
you're dragging and dropping items. Naturally,
it's important to be able to anticipate what will
happen when you drag-drop an item before you actually do the
dropping. The problem is that drag-drop is handled differently in
various situations, so sometimes you'll need to
modify your behavior to achieve the desired result. Here are the
rules that Windows follows when determining how dropped files are
handled:

• If you drag an object from one place to another on the same physical
  drive (c:\docs to c:files), the object is moved.

• If you drag an object from one physical drive to another physical
  drive (c:\docs to d:files), the object is copied, resulting in two identical
  files on your system.

• If you drag an object from one physical drive to another physical
  drive and then back to the first physical drive, but in a different
  folder (c:\docs to d:files to c:\stuff ),
  you'll end up with three copies of the object.

• If you
  drag an application executable (an
  EXE file), the same rules apply to it that apply to other objects,
  with the following exceptions:^[2]

  ^[2] The behavior in
  Windows XP is the same as in Windows Me and Windows 2000, but a
  little different from Windows 95, 98, and NT 4: in these releases,
  dragging an EXE file anywhere created a shortcut.

  • If you drag any file named setup.exe or
    install.exe from one place to another, Windows
    will create a shortcut to
    the file, regardless of the source or destination folder.

  • If you drag any file with the .exe filename
    extension into any portion of your Start menu or into any subfolder of your
    Start Menu folder, Windows will create a shortcut to the file.
    Dragging other file types (documents, script files, or other
    shortcuts) to the Start menu will simply move or copy them there,
    according to the previous rules.

• If you drag a
  system object
  (such as an item in the My Computer window or Control Panel)
  anywhere, a warning is displayed and a
  shortcut to the item is created. This, of
  course, is a consequence of the fact that these objects
  aren't actually files and can't be
  duplicated or removed from their original locations.

• If you drag system icons or items that appear within system folders,
  such as
  
  My Documents, Internet Explorer, or the
  Recycle Bin, any number of different things can happen, each
  depending on the specific capabilities of the object. For example, if
  you drag a recently deleted file from the Recycle Bin, it will always
  be moved, since making a copy of, or a shortcut to, a deleted file
  makes no sense.

If you have trouble remembering these rules, or if you run into a
confusing situation, you can always fall back on the information
Windows provides you while you're
dragging, in the form of the mouse
cursor. A small plus sign

(+)
appears next to the pointer when copying, and a curved arrow appears
when creating a
shortcut. If you see no symbol,
the object will be moved. This visual feedback is very important; it
can eliminate a lot of stupid mistakes if you pay attention to it.

Here's how to control what happens when you
drag-drop an item:

• To copy an object under any situation,
  hold the Ctrl key while dragging. If you press Ctrl before you click,
  Windows assumes you're still selecting files, so
  make sure to press it only after you've started
  dragging but before you let go of that mouse button. Of course, this
  won't work for system objects like Control Panel
  itemsa shortcut will be created regardless. Using the Ctrl key
  in this way will also work when dragging a file from one part of a
  folder to another part of the same folder, which is an easy way to
  duplicate a file or folder.

• To move an object under any situation,
  hold the Shift key while dragging. Likewise, if you press Shift
  before you click, Windows assumes you're still
  selecting files, so make sure to press it only after
  you've started dragging but before you let go of
  that mouse button. This also won't work for system
  objects like Control Panel itemsa shortcut will be created
  regardless.

• To create a
  shortcut to an object under any
  situation, hold the Ctrl and Shift keys simultaneously while
  dragging. If you try to make a shortcut that points to another
  shortcut, the shortcut will simply be copied (duplicated).

• To choose what happens to dragged files each time without having to
  press any keys, drag your files with the right mouse button and a special menu
  will appear when the files are dropped. This
  context menu is especially helpful
  because it will display only options appropriate to the type of
  object you're dragging and the place where
  you've dropped it.