Spaces? Underlines? Hyphens? Periods? Mixed Case? So many choices!

I’m speaking about filenames, of course. Folks new to computers don’t think about these things today, but in days gone by naming a file was an 8-dot-3 ordeal. That 8-dot-3 thing was the old DOS (and Windows) filename format: only 8 characters for the name, plus a dot and optional three character extension. Naming files was hell.

filename.hll

Today you have lots of room to name files; over 200 characters for a filename alone. Extensions can be 3, 4 or more characters. Yes, you can use spaces in a filename, which was pretty much unhead of years back. But spaces aren’t always kosher. There are still instances where typing a filename with a space causes the operating system and other programs to puke.

The solution, of course, is not to use spaces. I find myself avoiding them. (For some reason I keep using the terminal window; spaces at the command prompt present special problems.) In their stead I use one of three alternatives:

The underline. This is the most common replacement for the space, even recommended in some computer books. It works, too: file name becomes file_name, which still carries a similar look. The problem with the underline, however, is that it nearly disappears when the name becomes a link: file_name.

The hyphen. My first choice for replacing a space in a filename is the hyphen. It’s easy to type and it serves a similar visual purpose as the underline: file name becomes file-name. The hyphen is especially useful to me when writing dates in filenames: 1-21-08. Remember that the filename 1/21/09 is illegal because the / (slash) is a pathname separator.

The period. A choice I enjoy playing with is the period. Using a period is tricky, however, because periods traditionally separate the filename from the extension. It’s that extension that the operating system uses to identify the file type — so you have to be careful!

Next issue, I’ll show you some benefits to using such symbols to organize your files.