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Comment by kutkloon7 | Hacker News Reader

Those filenames look terrible to me.

BRAFWTNEGASSAY doesnt make any sense. To distinguish between the filenames you actually have to read the full filename, and with such long filenames chances are they won't fully be displayed, so that you have 2013-06-26_BRAFWTNEGASSAY_Plasmid-Cellline-100-1MutantFrac... For the first four files.

Keeping cruft out of your filenames seems like a much, much better way to name files. Also, most systems keep track of the creation data, no need to keep it in the filename. I think it's better to give files an id.

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BRAFWTNEGASSAY would make sense to the owner of the file or someone working in that particular project. Consider it a project name, or a keyword that is relevant in that particular context. If you're working with files from different sources with multiple contributors this sort of approach works brilliantly.

You could have named it differently: 2013-06-26_KUTKLOON7_Plasmid-Cellline-100-1MutantFrac

Creation date can sometimes be lost if you copy/move the file between different mediums

> Those filenames look terrible to me.

I agree. Maybe at some point, and in his example I think it makes sense to just change some of those '_' to '/' and boom, you now have folders.

"most systems keep track of the creation data"

You only need one tool that doesn't quite do things right to lose that:

- file copy programs need to explicitly set the creation date back to that of the original file.

- when you do save a file in an editor, it typically writes a complete new file (ideally through a write temp file/delete/rename dance). Again, the program may forget to reset the creation date of the new file to that of the original.

- I don't think got even _stores_ creation time stamps in repositories.

I've seen too many files with obviously bogus creation time stamps to put much trust in the creation dates of files.

> most systems keep track of the creation data

True, but often it makes sense to put date into the filename as well. For example, notes for an event that happened on a certain date. You might write the first draft at that date and then edit/move it later. It's still strongly related to the date the event took place, but the filesystem ctime and mtime will be different.

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