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What is a computer file?

When we want a computer to remember data for later, we store it in a file.
To make it easier to sort through our files, we give each file a memorable name.
The computer keeps track of additional details, like when the file was last updated, the type of file, and who's allowed to edit it. That's called metadata: the data about the data.
Here's a file listing from my Mac:
Clicking on an individual file pops up a dialog with even more metadata:
In this lesson, we'll dive deeper into two very important bits of metadata: the file kind and the file size.

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