pathpart

Pathpart is a term used in computing to denote an individual segment of a hierarchical path. A pathpart is the portion of a path that lies between separators, such as the slash character in POSIX and many URL paths or the backslash (and sometimes slash) used on Windows. In practice, pathparts are the elemental components that identify directories, files, or resources within a larger path.

Pathparts are used across different contexts. In file systems, a path is split into parts that represent directories and the final file or directory name. In web URLs, the path portion of the URL is divided into segments that typically correspond to nested resources. The exact interpretation of the first part can vary: an absolute path may begin with a root indicator, while a relative path may begin with the first named segment.

Normalization and encoding are common concerns with pathparts. URL paths often require percent-encoding of certain characters within each pathpart, while decoding can be applied for display or processing. Normalization typically involves removing redundant separators and resolving special dot segments such as "." (current directory) and ".." (parent directory) to prevent path traversal vulnerabilities.

Edge cases include empty or consecutive separators that yield empty pathparts in some parsers, as well as platform-specific quirks such as drive letters on Windows. Robust path handling tends to define consistent rules for how to split, interpret, and reconstruct paths from their pathparts.

Applications of pathparts include file management utilities, web routing and resource resolution, archive creation, and programming libraries that manipulate paths in a cross-platform way. Understanding pathparts helps ensure correct resource identification, secure file access, and predictable path processing.

See also: path normalization, URL encoding, path traversal, path parsing.