11/03/13 19:30:10

Naming Files and Don’t Giving a Thing

I found some old files today. I used to include the date a file has been created within the name. Good old times.

The rabbit hole: What’s a good file naming convention?

Obviously there had to be a better way, right? Right? Oh was I wrong. Read the comments (from 2006!) and have a good laugh. I don’t know about you, but when I name my files I just don’t give a fuck.

The general rule is simple: as long as the system supports certain characters, I see no reason to avoid certain characters.

I spend quite some time working with editors and designers. I giggle the first time I see design_1.psd popping up in Growl. I set some time aside for these folks and explain the advantages, but also the disadvantages of such file naming conventions. I explain that they can use whatever they feel like, because the computers we use have Unicode. As long as it’s useful there’s no reason to castrate file names in an unreadable manner.

Heck, I even use Emoji’s for filenames sometimes, just because I feel like it and I know that I can. And so should you.

Keep that in mind next time. YYYYMMDD