In computer programming, a fully qualified name is an unambiguous name that specifies which object, function, or variable a call refers to without regard to the context of the call. In a hierarchical structure, a name is fully qualified when it "is complete in the sense that it includes (a) all names in the hierarchic sequence above the given element and (b) the name of the given element itself."[1] Thus fully qualified names explicitly refer to namespaces that would otherwise be implicit because of the scope of the call.[2] While always done to eliminate ambiguity, this can mean different things dependent on context.
Commonly encountered applications of the notion have been given their own names, such as the fully qualified domain name and the fully qualified file name.
To distinguish a fully qualified name from a regular name, C++, Tcl, and Perl use two colons (::), and Java uses dots (.), as does Visual Basic .NET.[3] and C#.[4] In Java, ActionScript,[5] and other object-oriented languages the use of the dot is known as "dot syntax".[6] Other examples include:
server_name.[database_name].[schema_name].object_name.[7]
$scalar) that is in the package package2 would be referred to as $package2::scalar[8]
./foo/bar/baz.sh in /home/user/quz, which uses a relative pathname, the fully qualified name would be /home/user/quz/foo/bar/baz.sh This is an example of a fully qualified file name.[9]
wikipedia.com. for instance. This is an example of a fully qualified domain name.[10]