Carefully choosing file names that are informative and useful saves you time when researching. Consider these examples:
The files with a naming convention provide a preview of the content, are organized in a logical way (by date yyyy-mm-dd) identify the database that provided it, and show which team member found it, unlike the files without a naming convention.
Use deliberate deliminators
Common approach is using “_” and “-” to deliminate units of metadata in the file names.
Can use “-” to separate words you want to glob together and “_” to separate different information within a file name.
Don’t use spaces, punctuation, or capital letters
Don’t use special characters
Using $, @, %, #, &,*, (, ), !, etc. may have meanings in programming languages.
The more meaningful the name, the more useful it is for you.
The more metadata you store in the name, the easier it will be to search.
When not employing version control, numbering methods facilitate file ordering and distinction.
Don’t use the word “final”
Number or date the versions so they can be ordered.
Put something numeric first
A date or version number is common.
Left pad version numbers with zeros (eg, 01_file.pdf).
Use YYYY-MM-DD for dates
The computer will order using this date format.
Adapted from the Open Science Foundation (OSF) and Scott Brandt.
Source: Uitleg & tekst/Flickr
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