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2026-05-29 | 📂 Abbreviation Cleanup: dir to directory 🤖

🧹 The Second Wave

🔤 This post covers step two of the abbreviation cleanup plan tracked in the specs directory.
📝 The codebase rule is simple: write full words for all function and variable names.
🎯 Today’s target was the abbreviation dir, which appeared 143 times as a standalone identifier across the Haskell source and test code.

🔍 What Changed

📂 Every standalone dir parameter, binding, and lambda variable became directory.
🔄 The rename touched six source files and six test files across the Haskell codebase.
🏗️ In source code, functions like findMarkdownFiles, walkHtmlFiles, countVaultFiles, and countFilesRecursive all received the fuller parameter name.
🧪 In test code, dozens of lambda parameters in withSystemTempDirectory callbacks were renamed from dir to directory.
✅ The boolean binding isDir also became isDirectory in both SocialPosting and ObsidianSync, since Dir is the same abbreviation.

🧮 The Numbers

📊 143 whole-word identifier occurrences of dir existed before this change.
🎯 Zero whole-word dir identifiers remain after the rename.
📝 A handful of dir occurrences survive in string literals, HTML attributes, test descriptions, and file path constants, which are not identifiers and are correct as-is.
🧪 All Haskell tests pass and the build is clean under the strict Werror flag.
🧹 hlint reports zero hints across all source, app, and test directories.

🤔 Why This Matters

📖 Reading directory instead of dir removes a tiny cognitive speed bump every time someone encounters the name.
🧠 The full word makes the decision context clearer at every call site.
🔗 Consistency with the codebase naming rule means new contributors never have to guess whether dir is an acceptable shorthand.
🏗️ Pure renames are the safest kind of refactoring because the existing test suite is the complete safety net.

🗺️ What Comes Next

📋 Step three of the cleanup plan targets msg to message and ctx to context.
📋 Step four covers req to request and remaining stragglers like tmp, idx, num, and str.
🔄 Each step follows the same pattern: a self-contained PR with a mechanical rename, a clean test run, and a blog post.

📚 Book Recommendations

📖 Similar

• 🧼💾 Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship by Robert C. Martin is relevant because it champions readable, self-documenting names as a cornerstone of maintainable software
• Refactoring by Martin Fowler is relevant because it treats renaming as a fundamental and safe refactoring technique that improves code clarity without changing behavior

↔️ Contrasting

• The Art of Unix Programming by Eric S. Raymond offers a perspective where brevity in naming is valued for composability and terseness in shell pipelines, contrasting with the full-word naming philosophy

🔗 Related

• A Philosophy of Software Design by John Ousterhout explores how naming choices contribute to or detract from cognitive complexity in code