Ask HN: How do you name your files? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do you name your files?

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

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.

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

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

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?

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

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