What’s in a Name?

Virtually the only difference you’ll notice between local and networked files is their names. If you’ve found the use of the backslash character to be an annoying and peculiar convention, you’d better hang on to your hat because slashes of all persuasions are in your future in a big way.

Let’s look at the names of shared network folders and files. Each computer on your network (or on an intranet or the Internet) has a name, and every folder or printer that is offered up for shared use on the network must be given a share name as well. For example, if I want to give officemates the use of my business documents, I might share my hard disk’s folder C:\documents and give that folder the share name of docs.