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In Unix and operating systems inspired by it, the file system is considered a central component of the operating system. It was also one of the first parts of the system to be designed and implemented by Ken Thompson in 1969. Like in other operating systems, the filesystem provides information storage and retrieval, as well as interprocess communication, in the sense that the many small programs that traditionally comprise a Unix system can store information in files so that other programs can read these, although pipes complemented it in this role starting with the Third Edition. Additionally, the filesystem provides access to other resources through so-called device files that are entry points to terminals, printers, and mice. The rest of this article uses “Unix” as a generic name to refer to both the original Unix operating system as well as its many workalikes.