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Vox Populi: Best practices for file naming
Merlin Mann | Oct 23 2006
If it wasn't apparent from my pathetic cry for help the other day, even I -- one of your more theoretically productive persons in North America -- struggle with what to call things. Tags, files, and -- dear Lord -- the innumerable assets associated with making web sites, graphics, audio, and video projects; it's all a hopeless jumble unless you have some kind of mature system in place for what you call your stuff and its various iterations. Of course, if you're like me -- and I hope that you are not -- you still have lots of things on your desktop with names like " For prior art, I still treasure this Jurassic thread on What Do I Know where people share their thoughts on this age-old problem, but, frankly I haven't seen many good resources out there on best practices for naming. Anyhow, during a recent MacBreak shoot, I noticed that Alex and his team seem to have a pretty fly system for naming the video files that eventually get turned into their big-time IPTV shows. Thus, I turned to Pixel Corps' Research Division Lead, Ben Durbin (co-star of Phone Guy #5) for insight and sane help. And, brother, did he ever give it to me (see below the cut for Ben's detailed awesomeness). But, just so I don't lose you, do give me your best tips in comments: What are your favorite current conventions for naming files? How does your team show iterations and versions? Do you rely more on Folder organization than file names in your work? How have Spotlight, Quicksilver, and the like changed the way you think about this stuff? Ben shares how Pixel Corps does it, video style:
Dang. Thanks for that, Ben! To repeat: What are your favorite current conventions for naming files? How does your team show iterations and versions? Do you rely more on Folder organization than file names in your work? How have Spotlight, Quicksilver, and the like changed the way you think about this stuff? 86 Comments
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Lots of great ideas (I...Submitted by SimonT (not verified) on October 31, 2006 - 7:38am.
Lots of great ideas (I favour the YYYMMDD prefix for time sensitive stuff as well). I also think using meaningful directory structures is a winner too, but it does make protability difficult. If I mail you 'V22.doc' am I going to know where to put it when you mail back the revision? Will you know what it is unless I explain in detail in the mail? So why not use the most excellent THE Rename ( http://www.herve-thouzard.com/modules/wfsection/article.php?articleid=1 ) to add the directory structure text to the file name? Then strip it off when the file comes back. It's also a great help if you discover that your naming convention is just about to fail and you need to do some serious file naming surgery. I've used it for tens of thousands of files as part of major reference work projects and it's never let me down. » POSTED IN:
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