![]() Each card didn’t hold much information, so a program or set of records typically spanned a stack of punched cards. At the dawn of computing, many computers used punched cards to store data. A file can also be the name of the cabinet itself. In a paper-based office, a “file” is a set of documents stored together in a container or a drawer, such as in a file cabinet. ![]() Interestingly, the term “computer file” originated in the 1950s from a different (but related) metaphor. ![]() Today, thanks to graphical operating system icons, many people think of a file as being equivalent to a document such as as a piece of paper, or perhaps a photographic print. A file can also be a program that tells a computer what to do.Īpplications use many files to work, including executable program files (that contain the instructions required to run the program), configuration files (that tell the program how to run), and data files that might store extra required information in a modular way. Usually, each file represents a single document (such as a book report), a spreadsheet, a digital image, a video, a song, or otherwise. Files keep related data together so it isn’t lost or disorganized, and so you can find it when you need to read or process it.
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