Should directory objects contain a parent_directory_ref property?

[rpiazza]

The contains_ref property of a directory can contain references to files or other directories. Files have a parent_directory_ref property. It would seem that directories should have one also, for consistency. Unless a directory has an absolute path, it could potentially be referred to in the contains_ref property of another directory, but currently, that subdirectory object would have no context, although the parent directory has this information.

[jordan2175]

Talked about this on an editors call and this probably needs to be addressed in a future release as this would be a material change.

[jordan2175]

Did we mean an absolute path for the 'path' property. If so, than the 'contains_refs" property is a bit weird in that it can contain directories that would also be absolute paths. One option for addressing this would be to add the property 'parent_directory_ref' that is also found on the 'file' object. The proposed text for that optional property would be:

Specifies the parent directory of the directory, as a reference to a Directory object.

The object referenced in this property MUST be of type directory.

[jordan2175]

This would be a material change, defer to a future version of STIX or do via an extension

[allant0]

Future release.

[ejratl]

In a future meeting, we will discuss text and an example.