RE: Naming Files and Folders

[Fred Ridder <docudoc -at- hotmail -dot- com>]

Michale Ronquillo asked:
 
> How does everyone feel about putting underscores between words when
> naming files and folders? For example This_Is_an_Example.doc 
> 
> 
> 
> Is this necessary or subjective? How do you feel about capitalizing the
> words as if it was a title?
 
I can't say how everyone feels; I can only speak for myself.
 
I'm not a big fan of underscores because they make the pathnames and
filenames much longer without necessarily making them any easier to
read than interior capitalization alone.  And if a name that uses 
underscores is turned into a hyperlink (e.g. posted on a website, or 
sent as a shortcut in an e-mail message) the underscore basically
disappears due to the way most browsers and mail clients underline
links by default.  I generally use them only when I want to really set 
off part of a file's name--like appending "_DRAFT" before the extension.
 
But the best advice is to *NEVER* use spaces in path names or 
filenames.  Yes, it is (more or less) valid to do this in Windows, but many
tools at least stumble if not choke entirely on spaces in path/file names.
And if you do post a file with spaces in its name to a web server, every
space in the URL has to get handled as an entity code (specifically %20), 
which pretty much destroys the name's readability.
 
-Fred Ridder
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