I usually just give a file a standard name like Mortgage Payment History or Weekly Forms Starting Monday. A lot of the time I see people choosing names like mortgage.payment.history or mortgage_payment_history. Why do people use this style over a more visually friendly type like the one I usually use? This has been bugging me for ages.

I usually just give a file a standard name like Mortgage Payment History or Weekly Forms Starting Monday. A lot of the time I see people choosing names like mortgage.payment.history or mortgage_payment_history. Why do people use this style over a more visually friendly type like the one I usually use? This has been bugging me for ages.

 

Because back in ancient times, when we used the command line  (in Windows, DOS of Linux), A 'space' was used by the Shell as a delimiter between parameters.  In your example of Mortgage Payment History would become three parameters ("Mortgage", "Payment" and "History") to the Shell, not a single one ("Mortgage Payment History"). 

 

Hope this helps.

My take on this is that when you include a SPACE in a file name it becomes more difficult to specify it in a command line entry. That also goes for CAPS as well. Unix/Linux is "picky" about file names. Windows is much more friendly, to a degree.

 

But even in Windows command line (terminal) if you want to delete the file, "What I Did For Summer.txt," you'd have to type:  del "what i did for summer.txt" (quotes are needed to group the file name). Windows/DOS forgives the case problem in the command.

 

Unix/Linux the command would be:  rm "What I Did For Summer.txt"

 

So if you want to make it more readable, include the "." or "_", etc.....

 

 

It all comes down to standard ways of working. If its a simple word document or powerpoint etc. then its fine to use spaces and capital letters etc. However, when designing websites or programs with links to other files it is often a good idea to use consistent file names Or use this http://longpathtool.com/ software in this case.