Definitions¶
This section contains definitions of terms used in the documentation.
General¶
The following are general terms you should be familiar with, but are provided here for clarification and refernce.
- pathname
path - A string, consisting of filenames separated with forward slashes.
- basename
- The part of a path after the last forward slash in it. If the path ends in a forward slash, then the basename is the empty string.
- dirname
- The part of a path before the last forward slash in it.
- filename
- A string, which in a directory maps to a link. Cannot contain forward slashes. Filenames are components of paths.
- hard link
link - A directory entry pointing to a file.
- file
- A file in the file system, consisting of its inode and corresponding data blocks. A file has at least one link pointing to it.
- directory
- A special type of file, which maps filenames to links and can only have one link referring to it.
- symbolic link
symlink - A special type of link, which contains a string instead of pointing to a file. The string is used as a pathname.
Dantalian-specific¶
The following are terms that are used by Dantalian internally and in this documentation.
- tagname
- A special type of pathname which begins with at least two forward slashes. After stripping all forward slashes from the beginning of a tagname, the remaining string is considered a pathname relative to a given rootpath. See Tagnames.
- rootpath
- A pathname that is used to resolve a tagname. See Tagnames.
- library
- A directory which contains a link to a directory with the filename .dantalian. See Libraries.