Understanding the transitory /proc filesystem
Due Processes
The mysterious /proc virtual filesystem is a rich mine of information about everything in your system.
In productivity computing, typical users have limited use for the /proc directory. However, when you want information about all aspects of your system, including hardware, the processes running, and what is happening in the kernel, /proc is a concentrated source of fast and current information.
When learning Linux, you probably heard that everything is represented in the operating system as a file. Most of the files are text or binary, but others are more specialized, such as directories, or the contents of the /dev directory, which represent hardware devices and partitions. The /proc directory and its contents are another specialized type of file, making up a virtual or pseudo-filesystem.
What these terms mean is that /proc does not have a permanent existence on a hard drive the way an office suite data file or an application binary does. Instead, it is created as needed. If you look at the contents of /proc with the usual file management commands, you will see that everything has a current time stamp, and that most of the files have a size of 0 bytes. Presumably, too, /proc's special status explains why, if you use ls --color, either directly or as an alias for ls, the directories and other special types of files are not color-coded.
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