Best Practices – File Names

With the advent of drag and drop technologies over the years, and with the depletion of core technical competencies, have come some pretty bad practices with file names. While most file name caveats have been addressed through the years they can still be a problem in some areas.

Unix type systems are case sensitive. Mixing upper and lower case in your HTML or other coding is going to be a very bad idea. And, while Windows supports some wide open boundaries with regards to file names, many of the programs which are installed on the computer may not be so lenient. Just because Windows can see the file doesn’t necessarily mean the program will.

The most common places which file names will affect you are really all of the important ones. Backup software or other scripting may react badly to spaces in file names, or special characters such as ` (which in Perl and many other environments is an escape shell code character). Another gotcha for file names is in SQL driven data sheets.

Basically if you boil your file creation habits down to the following guidelines life will be a lot simpler for your administrators and coders.

1. Avoid mixing case. Always use lower case unless otherwise specified or markedly required.
2. Do NOT put spaces in file names. This is a lazy mistake, and is causing your operating system lots of grief. Not to mention it can cause FTP and some scripting to malfunction. Instead substitute spaces with underscores. For example the file name “one two.pdf” should be “one_two.pdf”.
3. Do NOT put special characters in file names. Examples of these are !@#$%^&*()
4. If you store ordered data, or warehouse data, name files with the YYMMDDHHVV convention. This means you name the file beginning with (for today which is August 2, 2008) 08080213_sample.txt. In this case YY is the year, MM is the month, DD is the day, and VV represents a 2 digit sub-version number so that if you save more than one file per hour, you need’nt include seconds. In this way your files will automatically be delineated in their listing by the logical file name. Don’t put the date at the end of the filename because it breaks this convention.
5. Keep file names under 16 characters long to avoid truncation of listed file names on some soft wares.

Services

We offer engineering, troubleshooting, design, private instruction, and consultation in the following areas:

* Linux Systems and Networks Administration
* Microsoft Networks Administration
* High Availability – Load Balancing and Cluster Nodes
* Network Engineering
* Network Security – Firewalls, Global ASA, Penetration Testing
* RF Engineering – Performance Reporting Only
* Electronics Engineering – Including prototyping
* Programming – Such as Perl, PhP, C, and many other types…
* eCommerce – Solutions and Integration
* Database Administration
* Server Administration – WWW, httpd, Apache, Proxies, HA, CAN, IIS, SQL
* CMS – Web Content Management Systems – Design and Integration
* Open Source Projects
* Data Mining – Data Object Orientation and Programming, Database Integration
* Business Process
* Cable Management
* Structured Cabling
* Fiber Optic Networks
* Ether Networks
* Microwave IP Networks, and P2P Microwave Links, Link Projections
* Project Management

Please contact us, and someone will get back to you (usually within 48 hours).

Services

We offer engineering, troubleshooting, design, private instruction, and consultation in the following areas:

* Linux Systems and Networks Administration
* Microsoft Networks Administration
* High Availability – Load Balancing and Cluster Nodes
* Network Engineering
* Network Security – Firewalls, Global ASA, Penetration Testing
* RF Engineering – Performance Reporting Only
* Electronics Engineering – Including prototyping
* Programming – Such as Perl, PhP, C, and many other types…
* eCommerce – Solutions and Integration
* Database Administration
* Server Administration – WWW, httpd, Apache, Proxies, HA, CAN, IIS, SQL
* CMS – Web Content Management Systems – Design and Integration
* Open Source Projects
* Data Mining – Data Object Orientation and Programming, Database Integration
* Business Process
* Cable Management
* Structured Cabling
* Fiber Optic Networks
* Ether Networks
* Microwave IP Networks, and P2P Microwave Links, Link Projections
* Project Management

Please contact us using the form below, and someone will get back to you (usually within 48 hours). Please include as much detail as possible, and make sure you leave accurate contact information so that we may get back to you promptly!

1. First Name(required)
2. Last Name(valid email required)
3. Email Address
4. URL(required)
5. Message(required)
6. Verification