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22.8: File Names

Files are generally referred to by their names, in Emacs as elsewhere. File names in Emacs are represented as strings. The functions that operate on a file all expect a file name argument.

In addition to operating on files themselves, Emacs Lisp programs often need to operate on the names; i.e., to take them apart and to use part of a name to construct related file names. This section describes how to manipulate file names.

The functions in this section do not actually access files, so they can operate on file names that do not refer to an existing file or directory.

On VMS, all these functions understand both VMS file-name syntax and Unix syntax. This is so that all the standard Lisp libraries can specify file names in Unix syntax and work properly on VMS without change. On MS-DOS, these functions understand MS-DOS file-name syntax as well as Unix syntax.

  • File Name Components The directory part of a file name, and the rest.
  • Directory Names A directory's name as a directory is different from its name as a file.
  • Relative File Names Some file names are relative to a current directory.
  • File Name Expansion Converting relative file names to absolute ones.
  • Unique File Names Generating names for temporary files.
  • File Name Completion Finding the completions for a given file name.