In digital
file
File or filing may refer to:
Mechanical tools and processes
* File (tool), a tool used to ''remove'' fine amounts of material from a workpiece
**Filing (metalworking), a material removal process in manufacturing
** Nail file, a tool used to gent ...
management, copying is a
file operation
A computer file is a computer resource for recording data in a computer storage device, primarily identified by its file name. Just as words can be written to paper, so can data be written to a computer file. Files can be shared with and transfe ...
that creates a new file which has the same content as an existing file. Computer
operating system
An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs.
Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also i ...
s include file copying methods to users, with operating systems with
graphical user interface
The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and audio indicator such as primary notation, inst ...
s (
GUI
The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and audio indicator such as primary notation, inste ...
s) often providing
copy-and-paste
In human–computer interaction and user interface design, cut, copy, and paste are related commands that offer an interprocess communication technique for transferring data through a computer's user interface. The ''cut'' command removes the ...
or
drag-and-drop
In computer graphical user interfaces, drag and drop is a pointing device gesture in which the user selects a virtual object by "grabbing" it and dragging it to a different location or onto another virtual object. In general, it can be used to ...
methods of file copying. Operating systems may have specialized file copying APIs are usually able to tell the server to perform the copying locally, without sending file contents over the network, thus greatly improving performance.
Description
File copying is the creation of a new copy
file
File or filing may refer to:
Mechanical tools and processes
* File (tool), a tool used to ''remove'' fine amounts of material from a workpiece
**Filing (metalworking), a material removal process in manufacturing
** Nail file, a tool used to gent ...
which has the same content as an existing file.
Shadow
There are several different technologies that use the term shadowing, but the intent of shadowing within these technologies is to provide an exact copy (or
mirror
A mirror or looking glass is an object that reflects an image. Light that bounces off a mirror will show an image of whatever is in front of it, when focused through the lens of the eye or a camera. Mirrors reverse the direction of the im ...
of a set) of data. For shadowing to be effective, the shadow needs to exist in a separate physical location than the original data. Depending on the
reasons
In the most general terms, a reason is a consideration which justifies or explains an action, a belief, an attitude, or a fact.
''Normative reasons'' are what people appeal to when making arguments about what people should do or believe. For exa ...
behind the shadow operation, this location may be as close as the BIOS chip to the RAM modules, a second harddrive in the same chassis, or as far away as the other side of the globe.
Use
All computer
operating system
An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs.
Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also i ...
s include file copying provisions in the user interface, like the command, "
cp" in
Unix
Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, an ...
and "
COPY
Copy may refer to:
*Copying or the product of copying (including the plural "copies"); the duplication of information or an artifact
**Cut, copy and paste, a method of reproducing text or other data in computing
**File copying
**Photocopying, a pr ...
" in
DOS
DOS is shorthand for the MS-DOS and IBM PC DOS family of operating systems.
DOS may also refer to:
Computing
* Data over signalling (DoS), multiplexing data onto a signalling channel
* Denial-of-service attack (DoS), an attack on a communicat ...
; operating systems with a
graphical user interface
The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and audio indicator such as primary notation, inst ...
, or
GUI
The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and audio indicator such as primary notation, inste ...
, usually provide
copy-and-paste
In human–computer interaction and user interface design, cut, copy, and paste are related commands that offer an interprocess communication technique for transferring data through a computer's user interface. The ''cut'' command removes the ...
or
drag-and-drop
In computer graphical user interfaces, drag and drop is a pointing device gesture in which the user selects a virtual object by "grabbing" it and dragging it to a different location or onto another virtual object. In general, it can be used to ...
methods of file copying.
File manager
A file manager or file browser is a computer program that provides a user interface to manage files and folders. The most common operations performed on files or groups of files include creating, opening (e.g. viewing, playing, editing or pr ...
applications, too, provide an easy way of copying files.
Implementation
Internally, however, while some systems have specialized
application programming interfaces (
API
An application programming interface (API) is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how ...
s) for copying files (like CopyFile and CopyFileEx in
Windows API
The Windows API, informally WinAPI, is Microsoft's core set of application programming interfaces (APIs) available in the Microsoft Windows operating systems. The name Windows API collectively refers to several different platform implementations th ...
), others (like Unix and DOS) fall back to simply reading the contents of the old file and writing it to the new file.
This makes little difference with local files (those on the computer's hard drive), but provides an interesting situation when both the source and target files are located on a remote
file server. Operating systems with specialized file copying APIs are usually able to tell the server to perform the copying locally, without sending file contents over the network, thus greatly improving performance. Those systems that have no comparable APIs, however, have to read the file contents over the network, and then send them back again, over the network. Sometimes, remote file copying is performed with a specialized command, like "NCOPY" in DOS clients for
Novell NetWare
NetWare is a discontinued computer network operating system developed by Novell, Inc. It initially used cooperative multitasking to run various services on a personal computer, using the IPX network protocol.
The original NetWare product in ...
. The
COPY
Copy may refer to:
*Copying or the product of copying (including the plural "copies"); the duplication of information or an artifact
**Cut, copy and paste, a method of reproducing text or other data in computing
**File copying
**Photocopying, a pr ...
command in some versions of
DR-DOS since 1992,
has built-in support for this.
An even more complicated situation arises when one needs to copy files between two remote servers. The simple way is to read data from one server, and then to write the data to the second server.
See also
*
*
Core dump
In computing, a core dump, memory dump, crash dump, storage dump, system dump, or ABEND dump consists of the recorded state of the working memory of a computer program at a specific time, generally when the program has crashed or otherwise termina ...
*
Soft copy
''Hard Copy'' is an American tabloid television show that ran in syndication from 1989 to 1999. ''Hard Copy'' was aggressive in its use of questionable material on television, including gratuitous violence.
The original hosts of ''Hard Copy'' ...
*
Hard copy
''Hard Copy'' is an American tabloid television show that ran in syndication from 1989 to 1999. ''Hard Copy'' was aggressive in its use of questionable material on television, including gratuitous violence.
The original hosts of ''Hard Copy' ...
*
List of file copying software
This article provides a list of inbuilt and third party file copying and moving software - utilities and other software used, as part of computer file management, to explicitly move and copy files and other data on demand from one location to an ...
*
ln (Unix)
The command is a standard Unix command utility used to create a hard link or a symbolic link (symlink) to an existing file or directory. The use of a hard link allows multiple filenames to be associated with the same file since a hard link po ...
*
NTFS junction point
The NTFS file system defines various ways to redirect files and folders, e.g., to make a file point to another file or its contents without making a copy of it. The object being pointed to is called the target. Such file is called a hard or symbo ...
*
Zero copy
0 (zero) is a number representing an empty quantity. In place-value notation such as the Hindu–Arabic numeral system, 0 also serves as a placeholder numerical digit, which works by multiplying digits to the left of 0 by the radix, usua ...
References
Further reading
N-level file shadowing and recovery in a shared file system United States Patent 5043876
United States Patent 5276871
External links
for
Emacs
{{DEFAULTSORT:File Copying
Computer file systems
Copyright law