On Sun, 1 Apr 2018, Sandra Loosemore wrote:
>> Our docs currently are about even and I think it would be good to
>> settle on one?
>>
>> % grep "filename" $GCC/gcc/doc/*.texi | wc -l
>> 92
>> % grep "file name" $GCC/gcc/doc/*.texi | wc -l
>> 103
>>
>> (Once we have consensus, I'll add that to codingconventions.html
>> and start by making the web pages consistent.)
>>
> The C and C++ standards documents use "file name"; there are other places
> ("bit-field") where the GCC manual has adopted the C standard terminology.
>
> In this case it might be more appropriate to adopt the POSIX conventions,
> since I suspect most of the uses in the GCC documentation refer to the host
> environment rather than the target language. This looks like the POSIX
> glossary:
>
> http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/basedefs/V1_chap03.html
>
> Here "filename" is given as the correct spelling, except that that glossary
> distinguishes between "filename" and "pathname" (a "filename" is the same as a
> "pathname component"). So perhaps many of the "file name"/"filename" uses in
> the GCC manual ought to be "pathname" instead?
On Mon, 2 Apr 2018, Joseph Myers wrote:
> See the GNU Coding Standards:
>
> Please do not use the term ``pathname'' that is used in Unix
> documentation; use ``file name'' (two words) instead. We use the term
> ``path'' only for search paths, which are lists of directory names.
Based on this it appears "file name" is the one to follow, so I went ahead
and documented this at https://gcc.gnu.org/codingconventions.html with a
patch at https://gcc.gnu.org/pipermail/gcc-cvs-wwwdocs/2023/010210.html .
Should we strive to use pathname (or path name) more broadly as Sandra
wondered? I'm a bit hesitant...
My next step is updating wwwdocs to consistently use "file name.
Thoughts?
Gerald
