PATH
Name Registry paths are colon-separated lists of name components. Name components may not contain colons themselves.
Paths and name components are presented as null-terminated character strings.
Paths follow parsing rules similar to Apple file system absolute and relative pathnames. However, the Apple double colon ( :: ) parent directory syntax is not currently supported.
Absolute pathnames are assumed to be rooted to the anonymous root. For example, in the pathname aaaa:bbbb, aaaa is a child of the root and bbbb is a child of aaaa. Relative pathnames are rooted to a specified parent name entry identified using an entryID value.
Pathnames, both absolute and relative, should not be hard coded in expert or driver code unless it is certain that the subset of the tree represented by the pathnames will remain static. The location of things in the tree can and will change over time, thus changing the pathnames. For example, a card can be inserted into one of several slots and potentially change the parent name entry that represents the slot. However, pathnames are useful for displaying the current topology of the tree or subtree or for referencing static portions of the tree.