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Comment by ndsipa_pomu | Hacker News Reader

I appreciate the idea, but the comma just looks horrible to me as part of a filename. I can imagine someone unfamiliar with the naming scheme to get confused.

I'd prefer to use underscore (when writing BASH scripts, I name all my local variables starting with underscore), but a simple two or three letter prefix would also work. I don't like the idea of a punctuation prefix as punctuation usually has a specific meaning somewhere and including it as the first character in a filename looks wrong. (e.g. Comma is typically used as a list separator and it's a bit of cognitive dissonance to see it not used in that context)

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I use my_ as a prefix.

Whenever I see "my" as a prefix, it feels like such a childish "my first Sony" thing. I hate official sites using that.

This was actually the same feeling I had when I tried to learn perl. I just had a visceral dislike for "my" as the keyword to declare a local variable.

I used to use "do" as a prefix e.g. "doBackup"

Nowadays, I tend to skip using a personal prefix and just try to name commands with a suitable verb in front (e.g. "backupMySQL") and ensure that there's no name collisions.

That’s a more meaningful prefix than “,” at the expense of a couple more key strokes. I consider that to still be a win in the book of tab completions.

I would replace underscore with “-“ or “.”

I'd warn against creating files starting with "-" as that can lead to unexpected results with tools if you forget to use "--" to end options. Nothing wrong with using "my-" as a prefix though.

Underscore requires pressing Shift, however.

> I don't like the idea of a punctuation prefix as punctuation usually has a specific meaning somewhere and including it as the first character in a filename looks wrong.

So you don’t use dotfiles? ;)

Well dotfiles demonstrate that punctuation can have a special meaning in filenames.

I'm not convinced by "quicker to type" arguments as that's rarely the bottleneck, so I'm perfectly happy with using underscores in filenames and variables. I wouldn't use underscore as the beginning character of a filename unless it had a specific meaning to me (e.g. temporary files), so I'd be more inclined to use a two or three character prefix instead.

For me it’s not about quickness, but about strain. Like in RSI.

On non-English keyboards (Serbian/Croatian/Slovenian, but as they are based on QWERTZ, I imagine German and possibly others too), both "+" and "-" might not require pressing Shift either, and are much better characters than comma.

These are inconvenient for doing anything with the script files except invoking them, because these characters introduce command-line options.

Which was the point here, wasn't it? Script files that you will be commonly running and only editing rarely, I'd optimize for how easy they are to run, not operate other commands on them from within a shell.

Naming a file with a "-" as the first character means you have to be careful to use "--" with commands to signify the end of options as otherwise the filename will be interpreted as being additional options with unexpected results.

e.g. ls -l -- *

Even when you're not deliberately operating on the commands, it's too easy to get caught out by it with wildcards etc.

Sure, but this would be contained to when your CWD is ~/bin or ~/.local/bin (or wherever you put your "-" scripts in).

Yes, but it doesn't make it a good idea to leave potential traps lying around even if they're in a different room.

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