I need a name for them both together. Do they have one?
I want to build a strip"DOT_AND_DOTDOT"() function that gets rid of them ...
+7
A:
Historically, they are called "dot" and "dot dot". The name for them as an aggregate is "those dots".
John Saunders
2010-03-01 13:53:26
this and parent directories maybe?
Aiden Bell
2010-03-01 13:54:44
stripThoseDots() :-)
Hannes de Jager
2010-03-01 13:59:03
too bad lexers don't understand escaping: strip_\.and\.\.() looks pretty :P
Aiden Bell
2010-03-01 14:02:20
stripThoseDots is seriously funny, but not really speaking, sorry ;-)
Barigorokarl
2010-03-01 14:04:44
Going for populist?
Joshua
2010-03-01 20:20:59
+3
A:
As far as I know there isn't a name for them collectively.
As "." is the current directory and ".." is the parent directory, you could go for "this_and_parent" I suppose.
ChrisF
2010-03-01 13:53:52
+6
A:
How about strip_meta_dirs() or enum_real_dirs() or a funny one ... notdot_filter_dirs()
Aiden Bell
2010-03-01 13:54:09
strip_meta_dirs() is short and understandable, I'll take that, thanks! :-)
Barigorokarl
2010-03-01 14:00:02
A:
I'd be interested to see if there's an official name for them, but I'd call them "location markers" or "directory location markers".
Richard Szalay
2010-03-01 13:54:17
+2
A:
They're "current directory" and "parent directory", but I suppose they could be called "intrinsic entries" since they're created in every directory by default.
Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams
2010-03-01 13:54:55
And a week later you read the method name and ask yourself "intri-what?"
dbemerlin
2010-03-01 13:58:50
A:
strip_dot_and_dotdot_from_filepath() is immediately understandable to me and I suspect the vast majority of programmers.
Using fancy words sometimes only confuses things.
Richard Harrison
2010-03-01 13:56:11
if(i_dont_think_that_a_function_name_can_be_too_big_whereby_its_use_makes_other_code_unreadable()){ use_name(); }else{ too_big(); }
Aiden Bell
2010-03-01 13:57:37
@Aiden Bell: I'm not sure that's constructive. This is based on my experience maintaining code where the function name doesn't immediately tell me what it does.
Richard Harrison
2010-03-01 14:33:27
It's been one of those Mondays - so I guess I was probably being over-sensitive. No hard feelings.
Richard Harrison
2010-03-01 17:51:43
+1
A:
It's not their names but . represents the current directory and .. the parent directory.
How about stripParentAndCurrentDirs()?
(I was going to suggest stripDotDirs(), but I'd call a directory like .git a dot directory.)
Frank Shearar
2010-03-01 13:56:22
A:
Since every *NIX system hides every entry starting with . i would call the method "strip_hidden_entries()" and just remove everything starting with a . (now how do you end a sentence if the last character is a dot which is not meant to be the period?)
dbemerlin
2010-03-01 13:57:40
A:
stripDotMetaDirs() or stripThoseDots() according to John Saunders's answer
Hannes de Jager
2010-03-01 14:03:12
+1
A:
Flip the problem:
Name the function getDirectories and just return everything except those. Then you don't need to mention them at all since it is fairly intuitive for them to not be included in a directory list.
JohnFx
2010-03-01 20:09:29