What is the naming standard for path components?

Question

I keep getting myself in knots when I am manipulating paths and file names because I don’t follow a naming standard for path components.

Consider the following toy problem (Windows example, but hopefully the answer should be platform independent). You have been given the path of a folder:

C:\Users\OddThinking\Documents\My Source\

You want to walk the folders underneath and compile all the .src files to .obj files.

At some point you are looking at the following path:

C:\Users\OddThinking\Documents\My Source\Widget\foo.src

How would you name the following path components?

A. foo
B. foo.src
C. src
D. .src
E. C:\Users\OddThinking\Documents\My Source\ (absolute path of the root)
F. Widget\foo.src (relative path of the file to absolute path of the root)
G. Widget\
H. C:\Users\OddThinking\Documents\My Source\Widget\
I. C:\Users\OddThinking\Documents\My Source\Widget\foo.src

Here is my attempt:

A. Base name? Basename?

B. File name? Filename?
The difference is important when choosing identifier names, and I am never consistent here.

C. Extension?

D. Extension? Wait, that is what I called C.
Should I avoid storing the dot, and just put it in when required?
What if there is no dot on a particular file?

E. ?

F. ?

G. Folder? But isn’t this a Windows-specific term?

H. Path name? Pathname? Path?

I. File name? Wait, that is what I called B.
Path name? Wait, that is what I called H.

Answer 1

I think your search for a "standard" naming convention will be in vain. Below are my proposals, based on existing, well-known programs.

---

A) C:\users\OddThinking\Documents\My Source\Widget\foo.src
                                                   ---

Vim calls it file root (:help filename-modifiers)

---

B) C:\users\OddThinking\Documents\My Source\Widget\foo.src
                                                   -------

file name or base name

---

C) C:\users\OddThinking\Documents\My Source\Widget\foo.src
                                                       ___ (without dot)

file/name extension

---

D) C:\users\OddThinking\Documents\My Source\Widget\foo.src
                                                      ____ (with dot)

also file extension. Simply store without the dot, if there is no dot on a file, it has no extension

---

E) C:\users\OddThinking\Documents\My Source\Widget\foo.src
   -----------------------------------------

top of the tree
No convention, git calls it base directory

---

F) C:\users\OddThinking\Documents\My Source\Widget\foo.src
                                            --------------

path from top of the tree to the leaf
relative path

---

G) C:\users\OddThinking\Documents\My Source\Widget\foo.src
                                            ------

one node of the tree
no convention, maybe a simple directory

---

H) C:\users\OddThinking\Documents\My Source\Widget\foo.src
   ------------------------------------------------

dir name

---

I) C:\users\OddThinking\Documents\My Source\Widget\foo.src
   -------------------------------------------------------

full/absolute path