COMPUTER PRINCIPLES

FOR PROGRAMMERS
File Systems and Visual Studio intro
Agenda
Storing and Organising Data
• If you had it all, where would you put it?
• File Systems
Software development
• Visual Studio IDE (Community Edition) demo
• industry uses Enterprise Edition
• Hello, World! program
Agenda
Activity (assignment):
• Visual Studio IDE programming demo in C
• File naming and file extensions
• Working with local, external, and cloud drives
for common file and folder operations
If you had it all, where would you put it?

Storage devices.
Drive / root,
Folder / Directory,
File
 Computer Storage
• Volatile memory: needs constant power to retain data
• RAM for primary storage. Fast – supports x-P-U __ Processing Units
• Non-volatile memory: stores data persistently without power
• Many types of secondary or mass storage. Slow – transfer to RAM

CPU fast RAM slow File: CourseSections

Course Sec- DoW Period
FPU tion
CPR101 APS145 SAA TUE 3-4

Records
GPU
SAA CPR101 SAA MON 1-3
Mon IPC144 SAA TUE 6-7
1-3 IPC144 SBB THU 7-8
ULI101 SAA MON 5-6
ULI101 SBB WED 2-3
 Persistent secondary storage devices
SSD
LTO
Linear Tape Open
HDD 18TB

Optical

CD DVD BD 100GB USB

personal use only
 Persistent storage devices historically
Storage media were mounted on "drives" used by a "machine"

Tape
Drive Disk Pack
Drive Diskette Drive
 OS mounts a storage device to a Drive
• Drive: storage device recognized by Operating System (OS)
• OS mounts drives: recognizes hardware & assigns unique
identifier
C: or D: or E: ... in Windows (mounting is automagic)
# mount /dev/sdc1 /media/usb-drive/ in Linux/Unix
-hardware- ---- identifier ----
• Mounting is the process of making the file system on a
storage device accessible to the OS and your applications /
software.
• e.g. plug in a USB drive
Persistent storage – DAS "D-A-S"
Direct Attached Storage
• within same server case or frame,
direct connect to system motherboard
• SSD – Solid State Drive
• High performance, 10% of enterprise/cloud
• High Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)
• HDD – Hard Disk Drive
• Good performance, 90% of enterprise/cloud
• Low TCO
• Scalability
• constrained by drive capacity and
• physical space within case or rack
• Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)
• 1 × 22TB HDD is 1/6 TCO of 5.7 × 3.84TB SDD
Persistent storage – SAN "SAN"
• Storage Area Network
• virtual drives. scalable. flexible.
• servers see it as if it were DAS
• similar function to DAS but
unconstrained by drive capacity.
• is effectively "attached"
• provides storage for rack / blade
diskless servers
• Fibre Channel connect for high-
performance.
Persistent storage – Cloud
• High Tier Cloud – needs high
bandwidth, low latency, private network
to cloud storage provider
• is effectively "attached"

• e.g. AWS S3 (Simple Storage Solutions),

Google Cloud, MS-Azure
• zero cap-ex but high op-ex
• flexible, scales up | down easily
• Not run over public Internet
• Not OneDrive, Google Drive,
Dropbox, iCloud, … used via the
Internet
Persistent storage – NAS "N-A-S"
• Network Attached
Storage
• file-level serving
to any OS
• good for backup
and file storage
• not for databases
 Persistent storage – Attached
High-performance & availability
• from fastest to slowest for high transaction loads (OLTP) & databases

• Direct Attached Storage – within same case or rack, direct connection to system
• SSD – Solid State Drive. High TCO = high capital expense & low operating expense
• HDD – Hard Disk Drive. Lower TCO = low cap-ex & higher op-ex.
• Limited scalability: constrained by drive size; physical space within case or frame
• SAN – Storage Area Network – block-level data storage, Fibre Channel connect
• virtual drives. scalable. functionally similar to DAS but independent of drive capacity.
• provides storage for rack / blade diskless servers, uses special network-like connection.

• High Tier Cloud – server needs sophisticated private network connection to cloud.
• Not connected over public Internet. Not OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox, iCloud.
• AWS S3, Google Cloud, MS-Azure – no cap-ex, very high op-ex. Scales quickly.
• NAS – Network Attached Storage, file-level serving to any OS
• Performance issues for database / OLTP hosting. good for backup and file storage.
 Persistent storage – Offline & Nearline
Backup & Archiving "cold storage"
• Linear Tape-Open (LTO-9 18TB)
• Optical Disc (Blu Ray 100GB)
• HDD 18TB
• low cap-ex & op-ex, slow / low performance
• Offline (tape | optical), Nearline (tape | optical library, MAID)
• Offline = manually retrieve tape/disc from physical storage and mount
• Nearline = robotic mounting of tape/disc or Massive Array of Idle Drives
• Cloud cold storage: AWS Glacier, GCS Coldline, BackBlaze B2
 What is a File? What is Data?
• File: uniquely named space on a Drive. Files contain Data.
• Data: a sequence of formatted symbols
• Software: encoded machine instructions (data in .exe executable
file) compiled from source code (data in a .c file)
• Information: data interpreted by software that performs a task
• MS Word file: data encodes words and images into an essay or book
• Plain Text file: stream of ASCII characters.
• <html> markup with a web site’s content (Ctrl-U in a browser to see it)
• programming source file's formatted symbols: #include <stdio.h>
• Code: human readable instructions for a compiler to generate an executable file.
• Comments: explanations for humans to understand the code
 Data format == meaning
• Words sorted in alphabetic order:
a her is man nothing without woman
• With Sequence and Punctuation:
A woman without her man is nothing.
• With same Sequence but different Punctuation:
A woman: without her, man is nothing.
• Data must be formatted to be useful and meaningful.
• so does source code!
How is a house and its things organized?
• Main floor Rooms and furniture use cases…
• Kitchen • to sit on
• Dining room
• to place stuff on
• Living room
• to store stuff in
• Second floor
• to sleep on
• Bedrooms 1,2,3
• for working
• Basement
• for exercising
• Garage
• for relaxing
Directory Structures, Parent-Child Directories
File / Pa t h d ir e c t o r y s t r u c t u r e
• hierarchical tree structure.
Applications
Courses • Courses is the parent of
CPR101, IPC144, and ULI101
CPR101
week1_notes.docx
week2_notes.docx
week2_lab.doc
directories
week2_screenshot1.jpg
week2_screenshot2.jpg
• CPR101 is a child of the
IPC144
ULI101
Courses directory
Documents
Users
What is a Folder/Directory?
• file system's hierarchically named cataloging structure
• C:\Users\you\Documents\Seneca\CPR101
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office16
• contains Files and/or other Folders / Directories.
• Helps to organize files that share some commonality
• Directories within directories are sub-directories
or sub-folders in a hierarchical structure
• Windows & Mac OS: directories are known as Folders
• Linux/Unix: directories are still called directories
 Path and Filename structure
Windows C:\users\student\CP4P-week1.docx
Linux /users/student/CP4P-week1.docx
drive folder sub-folder filename extension
root directory sub-directory FileName (optional)

• Full Path Name is the unique identifier of a file in a system:

• [drive|root] / folder / sub-folder(s) / filename.ext
• Windows: case-independent with \ backslash separators
• Linux/Unix: case-dependent with / forward slash separators
File Extensions
• A file extension is the code (1 – 5 characters) at the end of the filename,
proceeded by a period "." that denotes the generic type of file
• Windows associates a file's extension with the application that
processes the file’s data
• CP4P-week1.docx (MS-Word) sourcecode.c (C language source editor)
• readme.txt (Notepad) notepad.exe (OS launches this app)
• Double click a file to launch the application which opens that file
• Files do not require an extension, although they usually have one
• By default, Windows does not display file extensions in File Explorer but
programmers should override this behaviour (View menu).
 Common File Extensions
Extension File Type Extension File Type
.doc, .docx Microsoft Word .zip ZIP Compressed File
.txt Plain Text .exe .bin Executable program
.jpg JPEG Image .js JavaScript File
.xls, .xlsx Microsoft Excel .php PHP Source Code
.html, .htm HTML file .css Cascading Style
.c C Source Code Sheet
.cpp C++ Source Code .pdf Portable Document
Format
.rtf Rich Text Format
Naming Conventions
• Make directories and files to easy to work with, search for,
and understand, especially when working on servers.
• Directory / Folder Naming Guidelines:
• hierarchical names of categories and sub-categories
• File Naming Guidelines:
o Clear, short identifier of content and version number
o Correct file extension
o Understandable a year from now at 3AM
Common File/Folder Operations
Left click drag and drop to
• same drive  Move (within same instance of a file system)
• another drive  Copy (from one file system instance to another)
Right click drag and drop  ICT people always do this
• have Move | Copy option (half the time you’ll want the other one)
• Delete to Recycle Bin (keep R-U-sure? to avoid mistakes)
• Enable Recycle Bin for Removable Drives
• Rename many files: Windows PowerToys PowerRename
Visual Studio demo and activity
Notes
What follows will not be on the quiz but it is worth your
attention. It is here to provide more background and depth
to today's topics.
For later…
Reshma Saujani
• TED Talk: teach bravery not perfection. ~5M views
• Founder of Girls Who Code
• Author of
• Brave, Not Perfect (2019)
• Girls Who Code (2017) NYT bestseller
• Women Who Don't Wait in Line (2013)
 Curve of Forgetting,
Sine Wave of Remembering

Review = Review =
Retention = Retention =
Quiz marks Test marks

See U of Waterloo and Ebbinghaus

Persistent storage device architectures
• Direct Attach Storage – DAS
• Internal and removable drives attached to a computer/server
• Network Attach Storage – NAS
• appears as file server with a file system native to the requesting OS
• for data sharing among many users & systems on the same intranet
• used for home office, Small to Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs)
• Storage Area Network – SAN
• appears as drive to an OS, similar to DAS but separates computing from storage
• multiple computers use a single pool of storage
• high performance, flexibility, and complexity for large Enterprises and cloud services
• NAS and SAN can provide automatic backup and snapshotting, storage reliability and
redundancy, and scalability.
Cloud Drives (iCloud, OneDrive, Dropbox, Google/Amazon Drive)
• Internet + drivers can make remote storage look like DAS; for individual use
• Cloud services can provide virtual NAS and SAN for enterprises
What is a Character?
• A character is usually considered to be anything you can type
on a keyboard. Technically, a character is a byte with an ASCII
value. "ASCII codes represent text in computers,
telecommunications equipment, and other devices."
• Each standard character requires one byte of storage in a file
or in memory. (Double byte character sets exist for pictographic
languages.)
• Some examples: Aa Bb Cc … Zz, 0 – 9, !@#$%^&*()
• Note that Tab [  ] Space [ ] and Enter/Return [  ]
are also characters!
What are Reserved Characters?
• Operating Systems have reserved characters for
filenames and command line inputs. Characters you might
use in simple text, such as a question mark, have other
meanings or functions when interacting with the OS.
• Do not use these characters in file or directory names:
/ \ ? % * : | " ' < > [ ] { } ( )
• The use of a space character in a filename is legal but not
recommended. To separate words within a filename, use
a – (dash) or _ (underscore) or CamelCase.
More About Directory Structures
• In Windows, the \ back-slash is a folder name separator.
• In *nix, the / forward-slash is a directory name separator.
*nix refers to both Linux and Unix.
• ./ and ../ have special meanings in folder & directory
structures
o ./ refers to the current directory
o ../ refers to the parent directory
Absolute and Relative Paths
File / Pa t h d ir e c t o r y s t r u c t u r e
• We are in one location within a
Applications
Courses
file system at a time, that is
CPR101
week1_notes.docx
the current directory
week2_notes.docx
week2_lab.doc
• By default, any operations
week2_screenshot1.jpg
week2_screenshot2.jpg
executed by the OS will occur
IPC144
ULI101
within the current directory.
Documents
Users
Absolute and Relative Paths
File / Pa t h d ir e c t o r y s t r u c t u r e
• The absolute path is
Applications consistent from the root.
Courses
CPR101 • week1_notes.docx is in the
week1_notes.docx
week2_notes.docx absolute path C:\Courses\
week2_lab.doc
week2_screenshot1.jpg
CPR101\
week2_screenshot2.jpg • The absolute path is
IPC144
ULI101 independent of the current
Documents
Users
directory.
Absolute and Relative Paths (Cont’d)
File / Pa t h d ir e c t o r y s t r u c t u r e
• The relative path depends on
Applications
Courses the current .\ and parent ..\
CPR101
week1_notes.docx
directories.
week2_notes.docx
• relative to
week2_lab.doc
week2_screenshot1.jpg .\IPC144
week2_screenshot2.jpg
IPC144 week1_notes.docx is in ..\
ULI101
Documents
CPR101\
Users
Wildcards
• In file operations, we may want to access or work with
multiple, similarly named files, or with files where we do
not know the full filename.
• Use wildcards to help with this:
?matches any single character
* matches zero or more characters
• gloss* matches Glossary.txt, Glossary.doc, Glossy.doc
• gloss*.doc matches Glossary.doc and Glossy.doc
• gloss?.doc matches Glossy.doc but not Glossary.doc.
Wildcards (Cont’d) i
File / Pa t h d ir e c t o r y s t r u c t u r e
From .\CPR101\ which files
Applications
Courses are matched by
CPR101
week1_notes.docx o week*.docx
week2_notes.docx
week2_lab.doc o week2_screenshot?.jpg
week2_screenshot1.jpg
week2_screenshot2.jpg
IPC144
o week*.doc*
ULI101
Documents o *.*
Users
File Attributes in Windows
• File Attributes (archive, hidden, read-only, system,
compressed) tell the OS how to handle the file.
• Attributes can be set on or off.
• To check or set the attributes of a file or directory in File
Explorer, right click the item and select Properties.
• read-only on means the file cannot be changed
• archive: OS sets this attribute on when a file is changed.
Backup software must set this attribute off upon a
successful backup.