Members dravenzouk Posted April 21, 2009 Members Share Posted April 21, 2009 Recently I was given a database with a bunch of "files" on it. (many of these files will go on my ipod). Now, a LOT of these files have names on them that are written with underlines instead of spaces or punctuation. An example would be as such: This_file_s_name_has_a_bunch_of_underlines. I find this really annoying and confusing. I don't really understand why anyone would do this. I'm told that it's a quirk of some old-school computer nerds, but I still don't get it. So....what's the deal? Along the same lines: The titles to these "files" are also written in another way that's really a pain. Let's just suppose that some of these files are songs from an album. Well, each of those file titles would have not just the song name, but first the track number, the artist, the album, and the year. So if the file was a song called "Life During Wartime", the actual file name would be "07 - Talking Heads - Talking Heads/Stop Making Sense (Special New Edition) - 1984 - Life During Wartime". * WTF? Why would anybody do this? It makes it really hard to scan through a list to find a certain file, because there would be a bunch of files that all had essentially the same name for about 60 or so characters, and you'd have to scroll through them to see where the actual file that you are looking for is. Especially if you are looking at the list on a window that's been reduced down, or on a small screen (such as an ipod). * actually it would be written like this:07_-_Talking Heads_-_Talking_Heads/Stop_Making_Sense_(Special_New_Edition)_-_1984_-_Life_During_Wartime Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members dDigitalPimp Posted April 21, 2009 Members Share Posted April 21, 2009 i would bet that was an early MP3 ripping program that wrote out filenames like that. back in the day you couldnt have spaces in file names so thats why people used underscores (lines). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Rowka Posted April 21, 2009 Members Share Posted April 21, 2009 I do that.We share a lot of files over a network here at Really Huge Corp. Instead of emailing the file, we'll put it up on a network drive and send out a link. If there is a space in the file namd (or folder, director name) it breaks the link. So If I want to send this link to someone: \Florida1EngineeringXray_image_files and be clickable. It the "_" were not there, it would come up short and be dead. \Florida1EngineeringXray Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members justinbass Posted April 21, 2009 Members Share Posted April 21, 2009 Why is this done? Why the underscores instead of spaces in file names? Is that the question? Simply put, some programs can't handle file names with spaces in them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Deep Bass Posted April 21, 2009 Members Share Posted April 21, 2009 I just came across this yesterday. I always use an underscore instead of a dash in filenames. I was trying to read a file in Matlab, and was having problems. Then I realized my co-worker had used dashes, and it was messing things up. I should write a smarter script. If it bothers you, you could write yourself a script to rename all the files. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members misterhinkydink Posted April 21, 2009 Members Share Posted April 21, 2009 A lot of systems use spaces as separators, such as Unix and Linux, so an underline or hyphen is used where a space would be. Microsoft allows you to put all kinds of crap in filenames. I once had some files with '&' in them. Unix/Linux allow things like this: cp src1 src2 src3 dest Which copies src1, src2 and src3 to dest. So if you had this: cp My File Name With Spaces dest The system would assume you meant to copy My, File, Name, With and Spaces to dest. Adding underline or hyphen tells the system it's one item. You can also enclose it in double quotes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members ToeJamFootball Posted April 21, 2009 Members Share Posted April 21, 2009 Linux has a program called "Bulk Renamer" which will replace all the underscores (or anything else) with whatever you want. There is probably something out there for Windows. Here you go - http://www.bulkrenameutility.co.uk/Main_Intro.php Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Super Bass Posted April 21, 2009 Members Share Posted April 21, 2009 I do that. We share a lot of files over a network here at Really Huge Corp. Instead of emailing the file, we'll put it up on a network drive and send out a link. If there is a space in the file namd (or folder, director name) it breaks the link. So If I want to send this link to someone: \Florida1EngineeringXray_image_files and be clickable. It the "_" were not there, it would come up short and be dead. \Florida1EngineeringXray Same here, gotta use underscores in my file names. Makes things easier when you're sending links to people. I think Winamp used to write Mp3's like that back at version 3 or something. I'm nearly sure a few other programs did too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members t3ch Posted April 21, 2009 Members Share Posted April 21, 2009 www.mywebsite.com/my_new_song.mp3 www.mywebsite.com/my new song.mp3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members dravenzouk Posted April 21, 2009 Author Members Share Posted April 21, 2009 www.mywebsite.com/my_new_song.mp3www.mywebsite.com/my new song.mp3 ah ha! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members t3ch Posted April 21, 2009 Members Share Posted April 21, 2009 ah ha! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members i_wanna_les_paul Posted April 21, 2009 Members Share Posted April 21, 2009 Yeah, underscores suck! - i_wanna_les_paul Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members dDigitalPimp Posted April 21, 2009 Members Share Posted April 21, 2009 Yeah, underscores suck! - i_wanna_les_paul *creates i wanna les paul alt* Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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