unix-everything-is-a-file

I’ve heard and read that in UNIX-like systems that everything is a file. Here are some notes of what I found that describes the system in such a way.

The Linux Kernel describe pseudo-filesystems like sys and proc as files and directories.

sysfs

A filesystem for exporting kernel objects.

• Provides an interface to kernel data structures.
• Commonly mounted at /sys
• The files under sysfs provide information about devices, kernel modules, filesystems, and other kernel components.
• Most files in sysfs are read-only

proc

Process information, system information, and sysctl pseudo-filesystem

• Provides an interface to kernel data structures
• Commonly mounted at /proc
• Most files in proc are read-only

A lot of good information that you see in tools like htop are in there.