10 ms·

Ask HN: How do you name your files?

1 points by qrbLPHiKpiux 9y ago

What scheme do you to name your files? Any syntax you prefer?

roryisok 9y ago
This is such a wide open question, very hard to answer. Can you be more specific?
- qrbLPHiKpiux 9y ago
  WHat is first, to last. The date format. Separators? What info do you includ? How do you separate words? Dashes? Spaces? Und score? No spaces and capitalized words? Other tips and tricks?
  - roryisok 9y ago
    I don't have a super strict standard, but there are a couple of conventions I follow. ISO date format - 2017-05-23. Yyyymmdd is the only numerically sortable date format, whatever dividers you use I use spaces, not underscores I keep everything lowercase I split projects by folders, and have a number of sub folders inside with various standards names - docs, resources, src, art, and usually a root level file called wot.txt which explains what the project is. Sort of like a github readme.md file. I break my own rules all the time though. And my rules are more habit than anything. Following someone else's exact folder structure is more likely to cause you grief than help you be organised. Everyone is different
leed25d 9y ago
I try to use names that I think that I will remember. For files that I generate more than once, test data runs for instance, I use a date string that I have aliased in my shell like this: alias otag='date +-%Y-%m%d-%H%Mh%S' which yields: -2017-0521-1430h14
makecheck 9y ago
I prefix every file/directory in a workspace with a different letter, if possible, because this makes autocomplete as fast as possible (i.e. usually produces exactly what I want). I try to make every temporary file start with "tmp-" so I can quickly do things like "rm tmp-*" instead of staring at a directory full of files figuring out what I can clean up. If I include a date stamp, I use the standard YYYY-MM-DD form because this sorts perfectly by default. I don’t really understand people using things like "Mon-Apr5-..." because for me that makes it really hard to find files at a glance. It helps to observe how sorting is done in commands like "ls" because sometimes filenames can create other natural groupings. For example, I like to prefix all my documentation files with "_" so they show up together at the top.

1 points by qrbLPHiKpiux 9y ago

What scheme do you to name your files? Any syntax you prefer?

roryisok 9y ago

This is such a wide open question, very hard to answer. Can you be more specific?

qrbLPHiKpiux 9y ago
WHat is first, to last. The date format. Separators? What info do you includ? How do you separate words? Dashes? Spaces? Und score? No spaces and capitalized words? Other tips and tricks?
- roryisok 9y ago
  I don't have a super strict standard, but there are a couple of conventions I follow. ISO date format - 2017-05-23. Yyyymmdd is the only numerically sortable date format, whatever dividers you use I use spaces, not underscores I keep everything lowercase I split projects by folders, and have a number of sub folders inside with various standards names - docs, resources, src, art, and usually a root level file called wot.txt which explains what the project is. Sort of like a github readme.md file. I break my own rules all the time though. And my rules are more habit than anything. Following someone else's exact folder structure is more likely to cause you grief than help you be organised. Everyone is different

leed25d 9y ago

I try to use names that I think that I will remember. For files that I generate more than once, test data runs for instance, I use a date string that I have aliased in my shell like this: alias otag='date +-%Y-%m%d-%H%Mh%S' which yields: -2017-0521-1430h14

makecheck 9y ago

I prefix every file/directory in a workspace with a different letter, if possible, because this makes autocomplete as fast as possible (i.e. usually produces exactly what I want). I try to make every temporary file start with "tmp-" so I can quickly do things like "rm tmp-*" instead of staring at a directory full of files figuring out what I can clean up. If I include a date stamp, I use the standard YYYY-MM-DD form because this sorts perfectly by default. I don’t really understand people using things like "Mon-Apr5-..." because for me that makes it really hard to find files at a glance. It helps to observe how sorting is done in commands like "ls" because sometimes filenames can create other natural groupings. For example, I like to prefix all my documentation files with "_" so they show up together at the top.