About Directory Management
A directory that contains one or more directories is the parent of the contained directory or directories, and each contained directory is a child of the parent directory. The hierarchical structure of directories is referred to as a directory tree.
The NTFS file system implements the logical link between a directory and the files it contains as a directory entry table. When a file is moved into a directory, an entry is created in the table for the moved file and the name of the file is placed in the entry. When a file contained in a directory is deleted, the name and entry corresponding to the deleted file is also deleted from the table. More than one entry for a single file can exist in a directory entry table. If an additional entry is created in the table for a file, that entry is referred to as a hard link to that file. There is no limit to the number of hard links that can be created for a single file.
Directories can also contain junctions and reparse points.
In this section
| Topic | Description |
|---|---|
| Creating and Deleting Directories |
An application can programmatically create and delete directories. |
| Directory Handles |
Whenever a process creates or opens a directory object, it receives a handle to the object. |
| Reparse Points |
Describes reparse points. |