Specification of the UNIX Filing System

A specification of the UNIX filing system is given using a notation based on elementary mathematical set theory. The notation used involves very few special constructs of its own. The specification is detailed enough to capture the filing system's behavior at the system call level, yet abstracts from issues of data representation, whether in programs or on the storage medium, and from the description of any algorithms which might be used to implement the system. The presentation of the specification is in several stages, each new stage building on its predecessors; major concepts are introduced separately so that they may be easily understood. The notation used allows these separate stages to be joined together to give a complete description of each filing system operation-including its error conditions. Features of the specification notation are explained as they are used, and the Appendix gives the definitions of the symbols drawn from set theory.