knowledge-kitchen / course-notes

File Name Conventions for Regular People

• Principled stand on the minus sign
• Other applications of these conventions
• Exceptions

Semi-technical and non-technical people trained to use and maintain computer systems should have good habits. This includes following simple file naming conventions:

• only alphabetic characters
• no capital letters
• no spaces
• no special characters, except the underscore _ character (and maybe sometimes the - character, as discussed below )
• always use filename extensions:
  • .html for HTML markup files
  • .css for CSS style sheet files
  • .js for Javascript files
  • .gif for GIF image files
  • .jpg for JPEG image files
  • .png for PNG image files
  • .php for PHP files
  • .py for Python files
  • .txt for text files
  • .csv for text files with comma-separated values
  • .zip for compressed zip files
  • etc…

Principled stand on the minus sign

The current generation of highly-skilled web developers often use the minus sign (- character) in filenames and some very-experienced Search Engine Optimization (SEO) consultants even pronounce that using dashes (-) instead of underscores (_) in file names leads to better placement on the search engine results page (SERP) leading to more visitors to websites that use them. We will never condone this practice.

Other applications of these conventions

These same conventions generally apply to the following:

• variable names
• function names
• database names
• database table or collection names

Exceptions

… except that:

• you don’t need to put filename extensions on things that aren’t files.
• there are some programming languages and technologies have a strict conventions of using lowerCamelCase, UpperCamelCase, or other naming schemes - in those cases, follow the conventions of the technology you are using.