everything on unix based machines is a file

suppose we wanna traverse a path , each folder/directory in that path is traversed to reach the particular path there isnt a string manipulation

each directory is a table that has list of its content ,

on ls -la we can get that info as normal ls doenst list . files . and .. are also the content which point to the parent directories ,

ls -i we can list inode which has the actual info about file inode number , size and various properties but it doesnt have actual physical address (it does have but it doesnt display it )

a file doesnt know its name instead a key or name maps to file content dpepending on whatever directory it is in