The directories are the next level after the root directory. The programs you install on your computer usually create their own directories, or you may create a directory to keep all your personal files in one place.
In the old days when floppy disks had only a few kilobytes worth of storage, and hard drives had not been invented, the root directory was all that anyone needed to know about. In those days, you could rarely fit more than a few files in a disk. All of your organization of files was based on which floppy disk you had in the drive when you saved a file. With advances like larger floppies and hard drives, the number of files that could be stored on one disk became much larger. It became much more difficult to work with files, because a hard drive might contain hundreds or even thousands of files! It became evident that some way of subdividing a large drive was necessary, so that all like files could be placed together in some way.
To move to a different directory in MS-DOS you would have to type the name of the directory at the prompt and hit the enter key. For example, you want to see how many subdirectories and files that are in the Windows directory. At the C prompt you type CD (for change directory) windows and hit the enter key. (Remember, MS-DOS is not case sensitive.) The next thing you will see on your screen is:
C:\WINDOWS>
This means you are now in the WINDOWS directory. Typing DIR at this prompt will show you the subdirectories and files under the WINDOWS directory. In a GUI system like Windows 3.1 you could change to the WINDOWS directory by clicking on the yellow folder beside the word windows. This opens the windows directory. What you see on the right of the screen are the subdirectories and files contained in windows.
You notice while looking at the windows directory that the word windows is in lower case characters. Does this mean that Windows 3.1 is case sensitive?
