Naming files and directories the right way

[Retro]

Do it properly, mkay?

I don't actually agree with everything in this video, especially as the convention used can be just down to preference in some cases, but he's mostly right. See what you think.

I was suprised to see that the video doesn't cover the default path length limitation of 260 characters of Windows which can cause significant problems when users create lots of nested directories with long names and files with long names, exceeding this limit.

@Astro What @Geffers @Hitcore, being techy types, you might be especially interested in this.

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[Hitcore]

>Rule 1: Avoid spaces
Although I am aware of this one, I don't always apply it. With the exception of making websites, of course, then I am very strict about it.

>Rule 2: Avoid special characters
This is a funny one to me. As a resident of Denmark, I deal with the Danish language a lot, and thus with the letters Æ, Ø, and Å. But not all my laptops have these letters, as they were bought in The Netherlands. So with file and folder names I tend to avoid these letters, along with other certain characters, to keep things simple. Of course I could hook up an external keyboard with Danish layout if necessary, but I don't like to go there.

>Rule 3: Be descriptively concise
Admittedly I could be better at this.
It also doesn't help that on an almost daily basis I get to deal with three different languages, sometimes four.

>Rule 4: Case sensitivity
With file and folder names I'm kinda random with this, but with files for a website I consistently use lowercase to keep things sensible. With passwords I have a certain system where I use both, but in a consistent manner.

>Rule 5: Dates and sorting
If I need to sort stuff by date, I always use YYYYMMDD, so that whatever OS I'm using the files/folders are always in the right order. I'm happy to see that that is pointed out in the video also, so it appears that I have been doing it the right way all this time.

>Rule 6: Be consistent
See rule 3, lol.
Though I guess that I am consistent in a number of ways. Just not in every single way.

Good video, @Retro , it reminds me of where I can do better!
What are the parts you don't agree with, by the way?

 

[Astro What]

I was suprised to see that the video doesn't cover the default path length limitation of 260 characters of Windows which can cause significant problems when

You can get around that issue by using GPE or editing your registry to allow long paths.
I do it on all of my astro capture and processing rigs because of the file name patterning I typically use and the directories are broken down by target/date/gain setting/rotation/filter/file_name_pattern. It's really easy to run into the default setting that Windows uses. One reason I do prefer Linux. The one main gotcha with Linux is file names (and directories) are case sensitive.

 

[Retro]

What are the parts you don't agree with, by the way?

1 No spaces - don't quite agree. They're too useful to dump, I use them all the time without problems and if they must be referenced from the command line, quotes around them resolves the ambiguity. Occasionally I won't use them though.

If I was a developer then I probably wouldn't use them for my projects though.

3 Descriptive filenames. Can be important in some cases, but often not, especially if the file is temporary where I might give it a single character name for example. Context matters here.

5 He's absolutely right about the date sorting though and I use the international standard date format everywhere. Bank and credit card statements are a great example of this. I have hundreds of them built up over the years and I always rename the gibberish they come with to something meaningful to me and use that proper date format. I'm of course 100% consistent in how I name them too, so they sort and present properly.

You can get around that issue by using GPE or editing your registry to allow long paths.

Oh yes, I know about that, but for my home use I've never needed to change it in the almost 30 years I've been using Windows. It's a different matter at work though where I've seen users come a cropper many times with file paths that are too long. Somehow, it's possible to create it on the network server by a client PC, but it then can't be accessed on the client PC, can't be deleted or renamed etc. Weird.