> And yet you listed several reasons why folders are not directories and vice-versa.

No I didn't. I listed the exceptions where they are not the same thing. The fact that they're exceptions implies the existence of a rule, which is that they're usually the same.

Generally speaking, every Mac and Windows system I use, when I create a directory, I see a folder created in the GUI. And when I create a folder in the GUI, I see a directory created in the terminal.

So pretty sure that, aside from rare exceptions, they're identical and synonymous. So as long as you're not dealing with an exceptional situation, the terminology is literally interchangeable.

> Why are there no folders from the command line?

For historical terminology reasons, mostly. By the time GUI's introduced a new terminology, all the terminal commands had long since been named.

I really don't understand what overall point you're trying to make. But if you create a directory in the terminal that shows up in the GUI as a folder, it's 100% perfectly correct to say you created a folder in the terminal. Because you did.

And what happens when you are not using a GUI? Aren't you incapable of creating folders? If a folder is the same thing, why can't you create one then?

A folder does not exist without a GUI. A folder "might" represent a clickable interface that shows the same contents as a directory but a browser will read the contents of that directory using pathnames and not folders.

And mounting a disk drive onto a folder makes no sense at all.

Your "for historical reasons" is a made up reason unless you can point to an authoritative source for that. If nothing else, the source to Wikipedia in this thread says what I say and not what you wrote.

Sorry, but this is just being overly pedantic without any practical value at all.

Of course you can create a folder without a GUI, because in all cases but a few exceptions, a folder is a directory. "mkdir" creates a folder, regardless of the name of the command. When I load my GUI later, I see the folder.

Until now, I have never knowingly met anybody who thought there was any value in drawing a distinction between the two for the basic purposes of routine file organization. So I think you're fighting a lost cause here.

Good luck with your crusade though! Sorry our usage of the term "folder" bothers you so much.

What you call pedantic I call technically correct. Nowadays too many people make up words that have no meaning and misuse words but think that's OK cause "you know what I mean". No, it is not clear what you mean using your Windows terminology while I'm working on my FreeBSD server attempting to mount hardware.

> No computer system, from the command line, has a command that allows you to "make_folder" but every system has a "make_directory" (mkdir) or "change_directory" (cd) and so on. If there is little to no difference, then why is this so?

But doesn't that prove the concept that they're the same thing? If they were different things, surely there would be a different command for creating a folder and versus creating a directory. But there's just one command, and nobody is going to make a command called `mkdirakafol` ("make directory a.k.a. folder"). Sometimes multiple names can mean the same thing.

Like, a "trunk" and a "boot" can refer to the same thing. So what you just said is like "my car has an Open Trunk button, not an Open Boot button, so surely those are different concepts."

I've fallen for xkcd 386...