- Request from the application: When you or an application wants to open a file (By double-clicking or so), the application sends a request to the OS. The request typically includes (filename, path, desired operation).
- OS Interaction:
- Path Parsing
- Permissions Check. (This is done by consulting the file’s metadata, such as Access Control Lists, ACLs)
- File Handle Creation.
If the file exists and permission are sufficient, the OS creates a file handle (a unique identifier for accessing the file), allows the application to interact with the file without need to know the underlying details.
- File System Interaction: (OS interacts with file system to locate and manage the file on disk)
- File System Type. (E.g., NTFS, FAT32, ext4, each file system has specific structures and method to locate and retrieve files)
- Directory Traversal.