Question

I have a variable in code that can have file path or url as value. Examples:

http://someDomain/someFile.dat
file://c:\files\someFile.dat
c:\files\someFile.dat

So there are two ways to represent a file and I can’t ignore any of them.
What is the correct name for such a variable: path, url, location?

I’m using a 3rd party api so I can’t change semantics or separate to more variables.

Answer 1

If the values are not opaque to your application you may find it better to model them as a class. Otherwise, whenever you are going to act upon the values you may find yourself writing code like this:

if (variable.StartsWith("http://") || variable.StartsWith("file://")) {
  // Handle url
}
else {
  // Handle file path
}

You may fold some of the functionality regarding treatment of the values into your class, but it is properly better to treat it as an immutable value type.

Use a descriptive name for your class like FileLocation or whatever fits your nomenclature. It will then be very natural to declare FileLocation variables named fileLocation or inputFileLocation or even fl if you are sloppy.