Creating Directories and Learning the Directory Structure

By Joshua Erdman
Digital Foundation, inc.

A directory tree structure is organized the same as a family tree structure, it starts out small and branches out to all your relatives. Here are some examples:

Family Tree	Directory Structure
Father | |--son1 |  | |  |--Grandchild1 |  | |  |--Grandchild2 |  |  | |  |  |--Great-Grandchild1 |  |  | |  |  |--Great-Grandchild2 |  |  | |  |  |--Great-Grandchild3 |  |   |  |--Grandchild3 | |--son2 | |--Daughter1	C:\ | |--Documents |   | |   |--Personal |   | |   |--school |   |  | |   |  |--class1  |   |  | |   |  |--class2 |   |  | |   |  |--class3 |   | |   |--Net_Admin | |--Games | |--Windows

Notice that everything in the family tree branches off from Father, just as everything in the computer directory structure branches off from C:\. Let me explain how this is the same as the computer directory structure. Father is just like the C:\ drive. All other directories sprout from him. Son1 would be one of the primary directories from Father (in the family tree he would be called the direct descendant). You can see for yourself that all the other directories reside in the directories before them. That is how you navigate the directory structure on computers. If I wanted to get to Great-Grandchild1, I would first start with Father and go through the bloodline to Son1, then Grandchild2, then Great-Grandchild1.

Now that you can navigate through your existing directories lets take a look at where you keep your files.

Instead of having all of your files in one directory, we can divide them up into categories which would make it easier to sort. Refer back to the computer directory tree above. It is easily organized, and you can make yours similar to this. The neat thing about directories is that you can have as many as you want. Your branches can be like a maple tree, a eucalyptus tree, or a grapevine.

Now back to the point of this page: How to make a directory.

To get into Explorer, click your right mouse button on your 'My Computer' icon on your desktop. Then choose 'Explore'.

1. Go to the directory that you want to put another directory in. For example if I want to add a directory inside my games directory, I would go to my 'Games' directory.
2. Right click in the window that is displaying the contents of the folder. In my case I would right click in the window showing the content of my games directory.
3. Click 'New', then click 'Folder'.
4. Give your new folder a name.

The next recommended lesson is how to move files to your new directories using Explorer.

Article last reviewed: 12/23/2002

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