A RecordFile object is formed from a given path name and a file system specification. Here a check is made to ensure that the given path name satisfies the syntactical rules of the specified file system, and what is termed normalization of the path name takes place. What this means specifically is defined separately for each file system supported (see section "File systems"). This normalized path name is then the name of this object and the basis of all operations on it.
There are constructor variants which permit path name specification in a different form, either simply as a single string, or separately as two strings which constitute the directory part and the file name part of the path name, or as a RecordFile object for the directory part and a string for the file name part. In the latter case the file system specification is omitted because the RecordFile object already includes this implicitly for the directory part.