English UI Terminology: Directory, or Folder?

Question

When you are designing an application (assumed in English), and you ask the user to provide a path to a directory/folder, do you use the term Directory or Folder?

Is one more understood than the other? Is one more "correct" than the other?

Answer 1

Please note that they are not synonyms. Directories and Folders behave differently. For example, if you want to remove a File from a Folder, you need access to the Folder and the File, because the File is stored inside the Folder.

If, however, you want to remove a File from a Directory, you need access only to the Directory, because a Directory itself is just a regular File that lists the locations of (but does not contain) other Files. So, you just need to strike out that entry from the Directory, no access to the File is required.

This distinction is pretty important, because false and thus misleading metaphors can be at least confusing and in the worst case pretty dangerous when talking about filesystems. (Confusion about filesystem behaviour often translates into accidental information disclosure, data loss or security holes.)

A great percentage of questions on Unix mailinglists, but also here, on ServerFault and on SuperUser, about what to the asker seems to be confusing filesystem behaviour, can be traced directly back to thinking about Folders, when Unix does in fact have Directories.

So, in other words: use "Folder" when dealing with folders and "Directory" when dealing with directories.

Answer 2

'Directory' is older and usually used on Unix-ish systems. 'Folder' is usually used on Windows. Personally, I use 'folder' even for GUI apps on both Linux and Windows, it just sounds more "user friendly". (And I doubt anyone will really care that I didn't use the "correct" term.)

If you think your users (e.g. technical users) will be happier with 'directory', use that, but otherwise, I would go with 'folder'.