How do you name your folders?

[Dark Foo]

I know in Linux that you can use spaces in folders and file names and that you have to use \ if you use the command line to enter any folder with a space in them. Do you use any special naming conventions like . - or _ , or do you just leave the spaces there?

Guess this is more of an aesthetics thing more than anything else
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[John R. Graham]

Spaces in file names are evil or, at the very least, problematic. I typically use '-' because it's not a shifted character (i.e., you don't have to hold down the shift key to produce it) and '_' is.

- John
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[Jaglover]

I never use spaces, they interfere with bash completion, I use underscores.
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[Dark Foo]

and do you do the same with your files?
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I know 43 ways to kill with a SKITTLE, so taste my rainbow bitch.

[mv]

[champ]

[Etal]

[myceliv]

For no particular reason I use underscore_for_directories, and dash-for-files-and-the-like. Maybe it's because I can never remember what the DIR_COLORS mean. I don't much like Capitalized directories like $HOME/Music, etc. but some power greater than me seems to like them so I put up with them.

Not what you asked, but also in shell scripts I use $underscore_for_variables to save hassles with - being interpreted as an option prefix.

[mv]

[JESSEJJ89]

I use anything except for spaces, which I use underscore instead.

[ppurka]

I use anything, spaces and all. It is ridiculous to expect trouble from linux in this date with spaces in filenames and directory names. These are handled just fine by all important programs. One notable exception is latex.
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[gorkypl]

I use underscores, this is the way I learned it back in the 1980's

Recently started using all UTF8 chars in names, though...

[mv]

[ppurka]

[Dorsai!]

For scripting and other system related stuff (i.e. files that will not get touched in normal day to day operation) I use no special characters at all when possible. Also I try to keep everything as short and unique as possible. But that is a fairly common place practice I suppose.

In all other stuff (multimedia, documents etc.) I use all characters. For a long time I even had the forbidden windows (:/\ etc.) characters in my music collection because they were auto renamed after the tags. But because Rockbox for my mobile player is limited to vfat I had to rename them.

Other than that, bash-completion not understanding spaces is just another moment that shows you that "bash" actually means "broken ancient shell". While the already suggested zsh is very nice I use fish because it works out of the box and I can get it everywhere I want to work with only one command and do not have to configure anything including Tab completion.

Also in most high level and/or script languages like python handling spaces is a piece of cake so I am not sure why I would concern myself with some naming convention that is not natural for to read. Spaces are there for a reason.

[Jaglover]

It's becoming very clear it's about personal preferences. I for one agree with John, spaces are evil. Looking at a "spaced" file or directory feels like looking at a command with [invalid] options to me. Using Linux for too long I guess.
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