include or includes for directory name?

halojoy

/include or /includes
I have seen many examples using both these options.
From the semantic point of view I guess /includes/ is more correct.
This means there are more than one (1) file in directory.

The function name: [man]include/man
maybe influence some people to use /include/
But folders with several files inside are most often called:
/themes/
/images/
/icons/
/pages/
/templates/
/styles/
So, I would say, in line with english/php language consistency it should be
/includes/

/includes/
or
/include/

I like to know what you use. What do you say?
🙂

NogDog

It really does not matter to me, you can call it "fred" if you want: it's just a name. 😉

halojoy

I will not call it /fred/ 😃 and I am sure you do not NogDog.
The reason is that we should preferably use descriptive names in PHP.
There are some exceptions, situations when we should not use standard names.
But most times we should.

We do call $result for $result and $query for $query.
It is good practice to do so and helps understanding.

For same reason PHP functions try to have names that indicates best what they do.
It would not be good to call explode() and implode()
for wilma() and fred() 😃 Would it?

In line with good descriptiveness, '/includes' is better than '/include'
Because it describes a folder with several files for include.
🙂

NogDog

It depends on whether you want to think of it as a noun or a verb. If a noun, then I would use the plural "includes", but if you think of it as a verb saying that you are going to "include" the file name that follows, then drop the "s". But frankly, whichever you use, I'm going to know what you mean and not care if the "s" is there or not. (I'm sure I've used "include", "includes", "incl", and "something almost as bad as fred" in the past, and never lost any sleep over it - unlike tonight when my dog woke me up at 1:30am barking at something.)

Weedpacket

I do note that all the other directories are named with nouns... 🙂

I'm reminded of a site with URLs reading "http://www.example.com/weare/...", ".../wedo/...", ".../welike/..." for the different sections. As long as there is a sense that there is a logic behind the names it doesn't really matter a huge deal about what that logic actually is.

laserlight

halojoy wrote:
I like to know what you use. What do you say?

I have used includes as the name for such a directory, but to get you to think outside of the box, some alternatives include: auxiliary, classes, detail, inc, libraries, library, libs, modules, source, sources, src. I think that modules might be the most descriptive and least restrictive of the lot.