Your problem seems to be that you think that a path *is* a file or a directory.

It isn't. In your example above, C:/www/domain/docroot/articles/2008/08/10/01.html is *not* a file, just like wfsp isn't a person. C:/www/domain/docroot/articles/2008/08/10/01.html is the "address" of a file, just like "wfsp" is the "address" of a person. Except that for people we call their addresses "names", and for files and directories, we call their addresses "paths".