Foolish Filenames

I'm getting fed up of proliferating stupid computer file names. Back in the old days of DOS we had only 8 characters, a dot and a 3 character extension available to us; this made us think a little about how we named a file to make it easy for the name to be meaningful. Nowadays, with 32 bit operating systems, long file names, relaxed and less restrictive naming conventions, you'd think that people would have no problem giving files a name that could tell something about the content, but no, not a bit of it. In fact, if anything, filenames are becoming sillier every day.

WIth today's large hard disks, good file management becomes vitally important if confusion is to be avoided. One of my pet hates are filenames containing dashes spaces and underscores; these characters take up space without conveying any useful information. I wish more people would learn the use of modified Hungarian Notation that programmers employ when naming variables etc. The method is very applicable to file naming; basically you use upper and lower case lettering to make the name clear and easy to read. One of my hobbies is computer flight simulation and people in this area are about the worst file namers you can come across. Here are some examples of bad file names and my suggested improvements.

RLADSC-5.ZIP Believe it or not this is a filename for a Lockheed Galaxy aircraft.
My alternatives GalaxyC5.zip, C5Galaxy.zip, LockheedGalaxy.zip

OH_BLA_DI_OH_BLA_DA.MP3 Space-wasting underscores.
How About? OhBlaDiOhBlaDa.mp3

mylatestcv-v-3.doc Someone's CV (resume)
Better as MyLatestCvVersion3.doc

the_pics_of the party_23rd-DEC2004 Party pictures
Better as PartyPictures23Dec04

gkwxmas.mp3 The carol, Good King Wenceslas
Simply GoodKingWenceslas.mp3 or GoodKingWen.mp3

The key point is that a filename should be unambiguous and give some idea of what it's about. If you have a bunch of files on your system that you named a long time ago but now cannot remember what they are at a glance, then your naming conventions are bad. Worst of all; if you regularly send or give files to others do not embed your nickname or an abbreviation of your name in a filename, this form of self-aggrandisement does not impress and has nothing to do with content.

Lastly, if someone sends you a file whose name sucks, rename it well and send it back to them - maybe they'll get the message!