Other kinds of filesystem objects

Symbolic links

• Essentially an alias for another file, but by pathname rather than inode number (so they can refer to files in different filesystems, unlike hard links)
• Can refer to a nonexistent file

Device nodes

• Provide a file-like interface to certain hardware devices
• ls -l shows a "b" (block) or "c" (character) file type and device numbers instead of a file size
• Block devices (disk partitions, tape drives)
• Character devices (serial terminals, pseudo terminals, keyboards, mice, etc.)
• Pseudo-devices like /dev/null, /dev/zero, /dev/mem, /dev/kmem

Still more . . .

• Named pipes
• UNIX-domain sockets
• etc.

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