Follow

In things that annoy me to an unreasonable degree:

Using periods to replace spaces in filenames.

It's 2023! There is not a single filesystem in use outside a goddamn museum that cannot accept the humble space as a valid character in a filename! STOP DOING PERIODS.

Now there are those who will say, "But Alistair, using spaces in a filename is inconvenient, because you have to quote the filename or escape the spaces when using it at the command line."

And I will grudgingly accept this argument, although your shell sucks.

But I will then say "So pick a different substitute character that doesn't have any syntactic significance in filenames so it can be freely auto-replaced with merry abandon."

Tilde. Logical not. Butt-scratching emoji. Non-breaking Unicode general fuckery character. I don't care. Just not the period.

@cerebrate Had to make this…

1FB25;NO-BREAK GENERAL FUCKERY;Cf;0;BN;<noBreak> 26A4;;;;N;NON-BREAKING GENERAL FUCKERY;;;;

@cerebrate I find file names without spaces more convenient on the command line. But due to starting with DOS, I use underscores rather than periods.

@mauvedeity

Somehow, I had forgotten entirely about the underscore, despite it being my go-to choice for a space substitute for many years.

(These days, with good Powershell and zsh configs, I don't even notice the spaces on the command line. Autocomplete escapes them for me.)

@cerebrate glad I could remind you! I use zsh as well. I usually create names without spaces at the command line, and names with spaces in a GUI. I tend not to have much crossover so it works for me.

Sign in to participate in the conversation
Mastodon

a Schelling point for those who seek one