The MCP provides a file system with hierarchical directory structures. In early MCP implementations, directory nodes were represented by separate files with directory entries, as other systems did. However, since about 1970, MCP internally uses a 'FLAT' directory listing all file paths on a volume. This is because opening files by visiting and opening each directory in a file path was inefficient and for a production environment it was found to be better to keep all files in a single directory, even though they retain the hierarchical naming scheme. Programmatically, this makes no difference. The only difference visible to users is that an entity file can have the same name as a directory. For example, "A/B" and "A/B/C" can both exist; "B" can be both a node in a file and a directory.