Question

I cannot find a name for this anywhere. I’ve seen “up”, “parent”, “containing folder”, “double dot”, “dot dot” but I haven’t been able to find an official name for it. For example, if you’re trying to move up a directory:

~ $ cd ../HristoOskov/

… what do you call the dot dot ..?

Answer 1

I usually just use the terms current and parent directory, or use “dot” and “dot dot” if I’m giving someone verbal instructions (eg. spelling out a bash command.)

Most technical documentation I’ve seen refers to them explicitly with "." and ".." (sometimes using single quotation marks.)

For example, kernel.org on path resolution:

By convention, every directory has the entries "." and "..", which refer to
the directory itself and to its parent directory, respectively.

The path resolution process will assume that these entries have their
conventional meanings, regardless of whether they are actually present in the
physical file system.