File Organization

File organization is the methodology which is applied to structured computer files. Files contain computer records which can be documents or information which is stored in a certain way for later retrieval. File organization refers primarily to the logical arrangement of data (which can itself be organized in a system of records with correlation between the fields/columns) in a file system. It should not be confused with the physical storage of the file in some types of storage media. There are certain basic types of computer file, which can include files stored as blocks of data and streams of data, where the information streams out of the file while it is being read until the end of the file is encountered.

We will look at two components of file organization here:

1. The way the internal file structure is arranged and
2. The external file as it is presented to the O/S or program that calls it. Here we will also examine the concept of file extensions.

We will examine various ways that files can be stored and organized. Files are presented to the application as a stream of bytes and then an EOF (end of file) condition.

A program that uses a file needs to know the structure of the file and needs to interpret its contents.

ref:http://it.toolbox.com/wiki/index.php/File_Organization