INTRODUCTION: Abstractly,
a file is a
collection of bytes stored on a secondary storage device, which is generally a
disk of some kind. The collection of bytes may be interpreted, for example, as
characters, words, lines, paragraphs and pages from a textual document; fields
and records belonging to a database; or pixels from a graphical image. The
meaning attached to a particular file is determined entirely by the data structures and
operations used by a program to process the file. It is conceivable (and it sometimes happens) that a
graphics file will be read
and displayed by a program designed to process textual data. The result is that
no meaningful output occurs (probably) and this is to be expected. A file is simply a machine decipherable storage media where
programs and data are stored for machine usage.