"file name" vs "filename"

[Martin Sebor]

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 <gerald@pfeifer.com
>> <mailto:gerald@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.