On 23/08/2020 14:59, Hendrik Boom wrote:
> There are files and directories.
>
> Is there an establiched word in the Linux/Unix xommunity
> for something which might be a file or a directory?

Directories are just files that contain file metadata information in a format specific to the filesystem they are on.
In *nix, as has already been mentioned, everything was regarded as a file.
Caveat, they broke this in Linux with network devices (which is why there is no /dev/eth0 etc.) but it still holds true for everything else.

To answer your question from an application (not OS) programming perspective, yes.
The term commonly used is filesystem "object" (with file objects & directory objects).

It is usually left to the programmer to devise a sensible variable name with respect to the programs use to distinguish them from any other type of object the program may also be dealing with.