Reproducible Research › Module 2: Organising work
Naming files
Lesson 3 of 3 · 2 min
final.docx, final2.docx, final_REAL.docx, final_REAL_v3_use_this.docx. We've all done it. Good names save hours.
Three rules
- Machine-readable: no spaces, no special characters. Use letters, numbers, hyphens and underscores.
- Human-readable: say what's inside: survey-responses-clean.csv, not data2.csv.
- Sort well: start with something that sorts in a useful order.
Dates: always YYYY-MM-DD
The international standard ISO 8601 writes dates year first: 2026-03-14. Files named this way sort in date order automatically. 14-03-2026 or March14 do not.
| Bad | Good |
|---|---|
| final2.docx | 2026-03-14_thesis-draft.docx |
| Data (copy).xlsx | 2026-03-01_survey-raw.xlsx |
| fig 3 NEW.png | fig03_accuracy-by-model.png |
| script.py | 01_clean-data.py, 02_train.py, 03_plot.py |
- final2.docx
- Good: 2026-03-14_thesis-draft.docx
- Data (copy).xlsx
- Good: 2026-03-01_survey-raw.xlsx
- fig 3 NEW.png
- Good: fig03_accuracy-by-model.png
- script.py
- Good: 01_clean-data.py, 02_train.py, 03_plot.py
Numbers in front for order
When scripts must run in order, number them: 01_, 02_, 03_. Use leading zeros so 10 sorts after 09, not after 1.
Let version control handle versions
With Git (next module), you don't need "v2" or "final" in names at all. The history keeps every version.
RememberNo spaces, say what's inside, dates as YYYY-MM-DD, and let Git keep the versions.