Files on Linux: the absolute basics

In order to break up the larger topic of files on Linux, let’s cover some of the absolute basics that you probably already have some intuition of: plaintext files and binary files. We’ll also cover a practical error that you might see if you move Windows files to a Unix system, or vice versa.

Plaintext files

One of the simplest forms of text files you’ll encounter is the mighty plaintext file. While historically they were ASCII files, they are now typically UTF-8 encoded. You might come across other file encodings, but this is rare as they are generally considered obsolete.

What is a binary file?

Unix doesn’t differentiate between binary and text files, the way many other operating systems do. All files can be streamed through pipes, edited, and appended to. A file is just a file. When a file is set to be executable, Unix will do its best to execute it, either succeeding in the case of ELF (Executable...