"-" or "_" in filenames?

[him610]

Are there some guidelines on the use of "-" and "_" when developing filenames?

For instance, wireless-info and wireless-info.txt both use "-" while .bash_history and .bash_logout both use "_".

Is there some logic as to which one to use?

[TheFu]

Not that I know. I use both.

Then there's always useradd and adduser. Much clearer, right?


Some examples,

2024-Olympics-M_3m_Prel-str1080.mkv
2024-Olympics-M_3m_SF-str1080.mkv
2024-Olympics-M_3m_Fin-str1080.mkv
2024-Olympics-M_3m_Sync_Fin-str1080.mkv

The media parsers probably don't care, but my brain doesn't see _ like it sees -. I do the same for TV and ripped movies, just with the {Title}-{year}-{episode}-{source}.mkv

As for select/paste, X/Windows doesn't seem to care. Or perhaps it is my terminal? Doube-click grabs the word (spaces denote a word), triple-click grabs the entire line. Both put them into the X/buffer. I don't use addon "clipboards". No need. They just get in the way. No need for "copy" using keyboard or menus either. Why do things the slow way?

If a Title has a '-' in it, I convert that to an '_' for consistency.

For scripts, it is really 50/50 each way. Don't know why? I almost never make a script with uppercase unless the purpose of the script is related to something commonly using uppercase.

NASA-KSC-audio
NTFS-250G-Format

The NASA-KSC audio script was created about a decade ago. The NTFS-250G-Format script was created about 4 yrs ago after I got tied of looking up in my vimwiki how to do it. Scripts where my wiki for decades before I got hooked onto vimwiki. I have lots of README files in my ~/bin/ and in specific directories as reminders. They aren't just "README" since those are for packages, but I add other descriptive characters to the filename so I know it is something I've written.

Being able to find the file I need later is what my names are all about. Normally, I use locate -ir for that.

[Claus7]

Hello,

I suppose that _ is safer since in some cases the - is interpreted differently and might cause issues (size can differ). I think that I came across lately an issue using _ though: copy pasting didn't work, whereas typing it, it was recognized as it should. Nonetheless I still would prefer _.

Regards!

[guiverc]

I recall being told that "-" is invalid on some machines/architectures.. but as more didn't allow "_", being advised to use "-" as it was the more globally acceptable. Alas I can't recall on what machines/OSes they were, but given this memory is probably from three decades ago, its probably worthless today.

I think it'll depend where you trained, and what your background was... just like command options using hypen, no-hypen or double-hypen preferences showing the background of unix, bsd & gnu coders & training I suspect. Opinion only.

[currentshaft]

-_-

[QIII]

For many, many years I was a software developer, eventually owning a software company. In the 70s we used underscores.

Many things have changed. For one thing, it is now the case that hyphens make for better indexing of web content/resources. Underscores can confound indexing,

But I disagree that dashes are easier to read -- at least for humans. Well, maybe just some of us old-timey humans.

[him610]

BTW, did you know some systems don’t handle spaces in filenames well

Yes, I was aware of the issue with spaces. That is a good reason for using "-" or "_" in filenames, then there is also the camel method where all the WordsRunTogether with first letter of each word in caps.