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Hyphens or underscores in filenames?

L

lsquare

Senior member
Right now I'm in the process of renaming some files of mine. I want to use a naming convention that would be recognized not just in Windows, but also Unix, Mac, and Linux. I also would like it to be conform to web standards as well. What's a good practice here? I was doing a bit of Googling and it seems like some are suggesting that hyphens are better than underscores.

Right now I'm avoiding spaces and capitalization. Any other suggestions?
 
Hypens allow google to recognise each individual word, where underscores are treated as one word:

red_bike - would get hits for "red bike"
red-bike - would get hits for "red", "bike" and "red bike"

Try it for yourself:

"laptop reviews"
"laptop-reviews"
"laptop_reviews"

You'll see which has the lowest hits.
 
I prefer hyphens, or making everything one long word, perhaps with the first letter of each word capitalized. Linux has issues with underscores. It works, but it looks ridiculous in a directory listing.

I'm not strict about it, but this is my order of preference...

redbike
RedBike
red-bike
red_bike
 
I personally prefer underscores, but it seems like hyphens are more common on the internet. Maybe it is because links are underlined so the underscores are hidden.
 
lxskllr said:
I prefer hyphens, or making everything one long word, perhaps with the first letter of each word capitalized. Linux has issues with underscores. It works, but it looks ridiculous in a directory listing.

I'm not strict about it, but this is my order of preference...

redbike
RedBike
red-bike
red_bike
Click to expand...

Are you sure about that?
 
lxskllr said:
Hmm... No, I'm not sure. My clan mate's Linux files server puts weird characters in place for an underscore if I remember right. red_bike will become red#$bike, or something like that. Maybe I'm remembering wrong? Could that be for names with spaces?
Click to expand...

You're thinking spaces.

my file.jpg

becomes

my%20file.jpg
 
So far I don't think we have quite reach a consensus here on hyphens or underscores. Which is the "best"?
 
lsquare said:
So far I don't think we have quite reach a consensus here on hyphens or underscores. Which is the "best"?
Click to expand...

There is no "best". You use what works for you. I use both, as needed. I use hyphens for related information, and underscores as I would a space. So a file for a class (CS 3358), coming from a "Assignment" folder, named "file.cpp" I would name "CS-3358_Assignment_file.cpp", and that system is just for that type of file or folder. So it's whatever works for you. Windows and/or linux shouldn't have any issues with either special characters.
 
Fullmetal Chocobo said:
There is no "best". You use what works for you. I use both, as needed. I use hyphens for related information, and underscores as I would a space. So a file for a class (CS 3358), coming from a "Assignment" folder, named "file.cpp" I would name "CS-3358_Assignment_file.cpp", and that system is just for that type of file or folder. So it's whatever works for you. Windows and/or linux shouldn't have any issues with either special characters.
Click to expand...

I see! Thx for the info. So would you say that hyphens or underscores will have no issues with the web or any modern OS whatsoever?
 
lsquare said:
I see! Thx for the info. So would you say that hyphens or underscores will have no issues with the web or any modern OS whatsoever?
Click to expand...

Not that I have ever ran into, with XP - Win 7, including Server OS's, as well as several distros of linux. And many of those distros have had apache in use. But if something you use does have an issue, change your system to fit. 🙂
 
I tend to use spaces myself, with bash's tab completion escaping them for me and the fact that GUI apps handle spaces just fine I don't see a problem.
 
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