Naming

Last updated May 23, 1995.

Naming is one of the most important and most frequently overlooked areas of computer science. In computing it is rumoured:

Everything is a naming problem.
The Web offers an excellent example of the power of naming!

Concepts

Sticks and stones can break my bone, but names can never hurt me.

A name is a symbolic representation of a "thing". The thing could be an object of some sort, or an action to be performed. A thing can have multiple names. A name only has meaning within a particular naming context. A name space is the set of all possible potential names in a particular context. The naming domain is the set of all possible things that can be named in a particular context (the reverse of standard mathematical terminology). A binding is a mapping from a particular name to a particular "thing". Within a context a name has at most one binding.

Resolution, or name lookup, turns a name into the thing it represents. An attributive name is a name whose resolution returns the object in question, or provides a name for the object in a different context. If this new name can then be used to access the object the new name is an address. An invocation name is a name whose resolution causes an action to be performed.

It is possible for a name to refer to a context. A structured or composite name is formed by combining the name of a context with the name of a thing in that context.

General information on naming:


Distributed Naming Systems

Current distributed naming systems: Naming systems for the Web: Other future distributed naming systems:

File Systems

What's in a name? That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet.

Romeo and Juliet (Act II, scene ii), William Shakespeare

File systems are naming systems too!

Distributed Operating Systems

Naming is the glue holding everything together in a distributed operating system:

Odds and ends

I don't know how to spell miscellaneous :-)

Odds and ends that don't belong anywhere else:


Have any questions or comments? thanks!
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