File naming conventions

"Can you help me understand what some IT best practices are regarding file naming conventions? 

I love that I got asked that question.  I didn't have any official answers, except what works for me.

So I looked it up and found these resources:

https://datamanagement.hms.harvard.edu/plan-design/file-naming-conventions

https://datacarpentry.org/rr-organization1/01-file-naming/index.html

This is just the top level info from the Harvard site

Some Good and Bad Examples:

File names with no naming convention:

- Test data 2016.xlsx

- Meeting notes Jan 17.doc

- Notes Eric.txt

- Final FINAL last version.docx

 

File names with a naming convention:

- 20160104_ProjectA_Ex1Test1_SmithE_v1.xlsx

- 20160104_ProjectA_MeetingNotes_SmithE_v2.docx

- ExperimentName_InstrumentName_CaptureTime_ImageID.tif

Some of their overall tips (each is explained more on their site)

Tips for File Naming

- Identify metadata (for example, date, sample, experiment)

- What information is needed to easily locate a specific file?

- Use versioning

- What comes first?

- Deliberately separate metadata elements

- Avoid spaces or special characters in your file names