directory

directory

1. a book containing the rules to be observed in the forms of worship used in churches

2. Computing an area of a disk, Winchester disk, or floppy disk that contains the names and locations of files currently held on that disk

Collins Discovery Encyclopedia, 1st edition © HarperCollins Publishers 2005

directory

[də′rek·trē]

(computer science)

The listing and description of all the fields of the records making up a file.

McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific & Technical Terms, 6E, Copyright © 2003 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

directory

(file system)

A node in a hierarchical file system which contains zero or more other nodes - generally, files or other directories.

The term "folder" is sometimes used in systems such as the Macintosh or Microsoft Windows in which directories are traditionally depicted as folders (like small briefcases).

This article is provided by FOLDOC - Free Online Dictionary of Computing (foldoc.org)

directory

(1) A simulated file folder on disk. "Directory" was first used in the Unix and DOS environments. Apple introduced "folder" for the same structure on the Mac, and Windows followed. See folder.

(2) A database of users and devices in a network. See network directory and metadirectory.

(3) A database of websites organized by subject that is used by the search engines. Yahoo! was a directory site in its early days, but then added search bots to automatically index pages as the Web grew too large to manually index. Google uses information from the Open Directory Project for its directory site (http://directory.google.com). See Open Directory Project, Web search engines, metasearch sites and Yahoo!.

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The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Directory

 

(more precisely, Executive Directory), the government of the French Republic, which existed from Nov. 4, 1795, to Nov. 10, 1799. The Directory consisted of five members (directors) elected by the Council of the 500 and the Council of Elders. The government of the Directory expressed the interests of the big bourgeoisie. Its internal policy was directed against the revolutionary movement, and its external policy bore an expansionist character. The increase in the activity of the royalists prompted the Directory to carry out the coup d’etat of 18 Fructidor (Sept. 4, 1797), as a result of which many monarchist supporters were excluded from the Council of the 500 and the Council of the Elders and measures were taken to prevent the return of émigré noblemen to France and to combat the counterrevolutionary agitation of the priests who would not swear allegiance to the new government.

New elections to the Council of the 500 and the Council of Elders in April 1798 resulted in the victory of the republican-democrats, with the election of a significant number of Jacobins. After this, the Directory swung to the right, promulgating the decree of 22 Floreal (May 11, 1798) annulling the election of the democratic deputies. In the summer of 1799 the Directory once again swung to the left. The open reactionaries were removed from the Directory on 30 Prairial (June 18, 1799), and a progressive tax was levied on the big bourgeoisie. The “swing policy,” as it was defined by contemporaries, reflected the internal weakness of the Directory regime and provoked discontent among the big bourgeoisie, who dreamed of a firm authority that would dependably protect its ruling position in the country. The defeats of the French army in 1799 further undermined the position of the Directory. The coup d’etat of 18 Brumaire (Nov. 9, 1799), carried out by Napoleon Bonaparte with the support of part of the army and the big financiers, put an end to the Directory’s existence and led to the establishment of a military-bourgeois dictatorship.

REFERENCES

Sciout, L. Le Directoire, vols. 1-4. Paris, 1895-97.
Guyot, R. Le Directoire et la paix de l’Europe, des traités de Bâle á la deuxième coalition (1795-1799). Paris, 1911.
Soboul, A. Le Directoire et le Consulat (1795-1804). Paris, 1967.

A. I. MOLOK

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Directory

 

(Council of Five), a board of five ministers of the bourgeois Provisional Government in Russia. The Directory consisted of the minister-chairman, A. F. Kerensky; the minister of foreign affairs, M. I. Tereshchenko; the minister of war, A. I. Verkhovskii; the minister of the navy, D. N. Verderevskii; and the minister of posts and telegraph, A. M. Nikitin. It was formed by the decree of the Provisional Government of Sept. 1 (14), 1917. The Directory was created in order to find a way out of the acute government crisis that had arisen with the mutiny of L. Q. Kornilov and the fall of the second coalition of the Provisional Government. The Directory was entrusted with the “administration of the affairs of state until the formation of a cabinet.” It served as an instrument of Bonapartist policy and of the consolidation of the personal power of Kerensky. With the formation of the third coalition government on September 25 (October 8), the Directory ceased to exist.

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.