What are the widespread file attributes?

File attributes are information that can be connected to a computer file to include additional data on the file or its content itself. Unlike system attributes, such as file extensions or whether the file can be edited, there are many extended file attributes actually metadata, which are defined by a user or application, most of the time bears no significant meaning to the operating system. Examples of enlarged file attributes include the file author, the name of the department that concerns the content of the file or in some situations, the data that the operating system can use if present, for example, the location of the File View icon. Not all file systems, storage devices or operating systems support extended file attributes, which means that they may not always be transmitted by a file and may not always be sought by a system outside where it was created. The exact implementation of extended file attributes differs from one file system to another, with some versionUsing a single system file to store metadata and others store information in the file header itself.

There is no formal standard to determine how extended file attributes should be implemented or how to process the operating system or file system. The most common attributes are arranged as metadata in pairs of attributes-value, the basic data structure consisting of the name of the attribute followed by its value. This gives the flexibility of extended attributes in their use because the program or user can provide an attribute of any necessary name and value, although the value length is usually limited to a certain number of characters.

Attributes extended files are often used to somehow classification of files. This can be done with attributes such as the file author, some type of brief description of the file content or description of a readable person readableACE that created a file. In some operating systems, enhanced attributes can be used to search for files, so a group of files with some common extended attributes can be quickly assembled.

In network file systems, network administrators can be used to store information that can be read and used by special applications. This may include limitation of security and access beyond the basic restrictions provided by the operating system, or this may be information that will help determine the location of network storage for files in a large system. One complication that can occur when using extended attributes in networks, is that the target system may not support attributes and could remove information from the file, which means that extended data could be missing if the file was returned on the same network.