In several web servers (most commonly Apache), .htaccess (hypertext access) is the default name of directory-level configuration files. A .htaccess file is placed in a particular directory, and the directives in the .htaccess file apply to that directory, and all subdirectories thereof. It provides the ability to customize configuration for requests to the particular directory. The file name starts with a dot because dot-files are by convention hidden files on Unix-like operating systems. A subset of Apache's .htaccess syntax is also supported by other web servers, such as Sun Java System Web Server and Zeus Web Server.