Re: "file name" vs "filename"

["James K. Lowden" <jklowden@schemamania.org>]

On Sat, 15 Apr 2023 00:00:44 +0200 (CEST)
Gerald Pfeifer <gerald@pfeifer.com> wrote:

> 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 .

May it please the court, I suggest there's a difference between
"filename" and "file name", and that the former should be preferred
because it's clearer.  

A "file name" is the file's name.  It is a property of a file, like the
inode or size.  The name exists (or not) regardless of whether we know
what it is.  

A "filename" is a syntactic element, the thing itself, a string of
characters.  It is supplied as input or rendered as output.  

One advantage to using "filename" when discussing syntax is that it is
unmistakably a single token.  Viz, 

	-aux-info FILENAME
and
	source files to create an output filename
and
	The filename may be absolute

None of those examples is improved by substituting "file name".  At
best, the meaning is unchanged.  At worst, it's misleading.  

It's not obvious to me that the the distinction I'm drawing is
universally recognized.  At the same time, it's not obvious that the
gcc documentation would be improved by strict adherence to that
distinction, or by pedantically choosing to use one or the other. But,
if one is to be chosen for uniformity, "filename" is less apt to
confuse.  

--jkl