"file name" vs "filename"

[Sandra Loosemore]

On 04/01/2018 02:56 PM, Joel Sherrill wrote:
> 
> 
> On Sun, Apr 1, 2018, 3:16 PM Gerald Pfeifer <gerald@pfeifer.com 
> <mailto:gerald@pfeifer.com>> wrote:
> 
>     And now to the most important question of all. ;-)Â  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?
> 
>      Â  % grep "filename" $GCC/gcc/doc/*.texi | wc -l
>      Â  92
>      Â  % grep "file name" $GCC/gcc/doc/*.texi | wc -l
>      Â  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?

-Sandra