If you want to do some thing with a directory/folder you use System.IO.Directory but if you want to display a dialog for browsing one you use FolderBrowserDialog?
Why is one named Directory and the other Folder?
+13
A:
Probably because the team that wrote the System.IO namespace was not the same team that wrote System.Windows.Forms.
Ian Kemp
2009-10-07 08:51:17
+4
A:
Maybe because Folder in this case is rather a term of Windows(not only?) user interface than a definition of file system object.
macropas
2009-10-07 09:03:37
A:
Maybe one was written by a Mac dude and the other by a PC dude.
KristoferA - Huagati.com
2009-10-07 09:06:04
+1
A:
Maybe because FolderBrowserDialog is a porting function from win32 platform SDK ShellBrowseForFolder()
Benny
2009-10-07 09:19:33
+3
A:
In the good ol' days of DOS, back in the 1980's, when DOS 2.0 came along and introduced the concept of putting files in more than one place on your 160K floppy disk or 10MB hard disk, Microsoft called these "directories", or "subdirectories" the original shell command being DIR to list said files.
When the first Windows 1.0 UI came along several years later, said directories were represented by a folder icon in the MS-DOS Executive, which is what the Windows Explorer was originally known as (more or less).
Hence, "folder" is a user-friendly metaphor for the more technical sounding "directory".
Bob Kaufman
2009-10-07 13:30:21
A similar metaphor existed on the Commodore Amiga, although they have chosen "Drawer" instead of "Folder".
Michael Stum
2009-10-07 13:38:08
And on top of that, Microsoft tried to add the briefcase concept to hold many folder, but that concept failed against the general public. +1 for historical reference
Pierre-Alain Vigeant
2009-10-07 13:43:26