Uniform Naming Convention

(networking)

Uniform Naming Convention - (UNC) Used in IBM PC networking to completely specify a directory on a file server. The basic format is: \\servername\sharename where "servername" is the hostname of a network file server, and "sharename" is the name of a networked or shared directory. Note this is not the same as the conventional MS-DOS "C:\windows" directory name. E.g. \\server1\dave might be set up to point to C:\users\homedirs\dave on a server called "server1". It is possible to execute a program using this convention without having to specifically link a drive, by running: \\server\share\directory\program.exe The undocumented DOS command, TRUENAME can be used to find out the UNC name of a file or directory on a network drive.