Vladimir Prus wrote:
Beman Dawes wrote:
* Change leaf() to base_name(). * Change branch() to base_path().
I don't think that's very clear. In POSIX, you have dirname + basename, so the model is that file path is "directory + base". What is the meaning of "base" in "base_path"? If you have something named 'base', then you must have something that can be added to base to produce something bigger. But it appears that everything is now called 'base_xxx'.
Looking at Java, the File class has the getParentFile() method, which seems fairly obvious. It also has 'getName()' method that returns last component of the path.
Looking at Qt, the QFileInfo class provides path() and fileName() methods that add up to complete path. The baseName() method returns part of fileName until the first dot -- and there are functions to get suffix -- suffix() and completeSuffix(). The path() method returns QString, and there's dir() method that returns QDir.
Why don't we borrow those examples and use 'directory' + 'name'?
To me, "directory" implies a single directory name rather than a path. That's always been a gripe of mine when looking at other systems. But I do think the very similar 'path' + 'name' approach is what we are aiming for.
The mental model for the new name is that for a path, p:
p.base_name() == base_name_prefix(p) + base_name_extension(p)
Does this actually add up? My mental model of "prefix" is that you have prefix, followed by stem, followed by suffix. You have no stem, and have extension instead of suffix. It probably should be "stem" + "suffix", or "core" + "extension", or, well "basename" + "extension".
"stem" is an interesting suggestion. For "word stem", Wikipedia says "In linguistics, a stem (sometimes also theme) is the part of a word that is common to all its inflected variants." That pretty much describes the basename concept. --Beman