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It can read files, write files, and allocate memory. Is there anything else you need to compile software?

Can it? Files on Windows 95 and files on most Unix-like OSes are very different things.

They're the same from the perspective of a stream of persistent bytes.

If you want "very different" then look at the record-based filesystems used in mainframes.

Do you have any recommended reading about record-based filesystems?