On 04/01/2018 04:54 PM, Sandra Loosemore wrote:
On 04/01/2018 02:56 PM, Joel Sherrill wrote:
On Sun, Apr 1, 2018, 3:16 PM Gerald Pfeifer <ger...@pfeifer.com
<mailto:ger...@pfeifer.com>> wrote:
And now to the most important question of all. ;-) Should we use
"file name" or "filename" when referring to the name of a file?
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.)
Searching and looking at online dictionaries, it looks like filename
is the currently preferred form.
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?
I don't have an opinion on how to spell it but I would like
to suggest that once a decision is made and the documentation
converges on the same spelling we make it a goal to also add
a script to enforce it. That way it stays consistent and
authors as well as reviewers can focus on the substance of
our changes rather than on the minutia of which equivalent
form to choose.
Martin
PS Incidentally, also unlike C and C++, POSIX prefers
the hyphen in side-effect to the non-hyphenated form.
