UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi there.

reading the if entry from man, i get this:

-f file True if file exists and is a regular file.

What is exactly a regular file ?





Thanks,

--- 435 Gavea ---

Hi,

A regular file contains data, it can be text or binary files...

to be very precise

when you do a ls -l if the first column of the file permissions is a -, then that file is a regular file.
I dont really think that it should be a text or data file, it can be a binary file as well, or for that matter any other file, just the the first column of ls -l should be -

correct me if i m wrong

for eg
-rw-rw-r-- 1 username group 141 Nov 21 14:08 log

here the first column of -rw-rw-r-- is a -, it means it is a regular file.

There are different types of files (actually, everything in unix is a file), including:

block special file
character special file
directory file
pipe or FIFO special file
regular file
symbolic link
socket

- http://www.labri.fr/Perso/~betrema/s...e97.html#types

So a regular file is one that is not a directory or a link, etc.. it's "regular" because there's nothing special about it.