Sometimes it is useful to assign MIME types to other objects in the filesystem, such as directories, sockets and device files. This could be useful when looking up an icon for a type, or for providing a textual description of one of these objects. The media type 'inode' is provided for this purpose, with the following types corresponding to the standard types of object found in a Unix filesystem:

inode/blockdevice

inode/chardevice

inode/directory

inode/fifo

inode/mount-point

inode/socket

inode/symlink

An inode/mount-point is a subclass of inode/directory. It can be useful when adding extra actions for these directories, such as 'mount' or 'eject'. Mounted directories can be detected by comparing the 'st_dev' of a directory with that of its parent. If they differ, they are from different devices and the directory is a mount point.