Why is "Everything is a file" unique to the Unix operating systems?
Problem
I often hear people say "Unix's unique philosophy is that it treats everything as a file" or "In Unix, everything is a file". But I've never heard anyone explain why it is unique to Unix. So, why is this unique to Unix? Does other operating systems such as Windows and Macs not operate on files? And, is it unique compared to other operating systems?
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Fix for: Why is "Everything is a file" unique to the Unix operating systems?
So, why is this unique to Unix? Typical operating systems, prior to Unix, treated files one way and treated each peripheral device according to the characteristics of that device. That is, if the output of a program was written to a file on disk, that was the only place the output could go; you could not send it to the printer or the tape drive. Each program had to be aware of each device used for input and output, and have command options to deal with alternate I/O devices. Unix treats all dev…
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