Using the command line is going to be a lot easier if you keep a few simple tips in mind.

  1. For the love of everything, please name files and directories (folders) following a specific set of conventions. What are those conventions? Well, for starters, don’t use any of the symbols in the table below.

Table: Symbols on the naughty list

# pound < left angle bracket $ dollar sign
% percent > right angle bracket ! exclamation point
& ampersand * asterisk ' single quotes
{ left curly bracket ? question mark " double quotes
} right curly bracket / forward slash : colon
\ back slash blank spaces @ at sign
; semicolon ~ tilde | pipe
  • “But I already used these symbols in my past naming! What do I do now?” Well, my personal suggestion (for everything other than spaces), is that you should rename them through the normal way of accessing folders and right-clicking the name. Trying to rename them through the command line is just going to return errors. Spaces can be addressed through using \ / in place of the space and renaming them through mv, but this can get rather annoying if you have similarly named files, all with spaces.
  • “I can’t use spaces! What do I do now?!?” Welcome to Computer 101. The easiest way around using spaces is through _ (the underscore) or - (the dash). People that do a lot of web-work are vehemently against underscores because of the implications in search engine indexing and website creation. So if that seems like you, or will eventually be you, you probably just want to use dashes.

  1. Do not start or end file names with spaces, periods, hyphens, or underscores.

  2. Keep file names relevant, but on the shorter side. Linux has a max filename length of 255 characters (who needs that many?!?) and a maximum path length of 4096 (information on paths can be found in pwd).

  3. Operating systems are case sensitive, so it’s always a good idea to use lowercase for everything. I use uppercase for directories and acronyms; keep yourself consistent. The file Alpha.txt is different from alpha.txt, and thus both could exist within a given directory.

  4. Don’t name files the same thing as a Unix command. Why you would even consider this, I don’t really know.

  5. File extensions are important. Try to use widely-known ones, like .txt for a text file. Scripts usually end with .sh, python scripts usually end with .py.