using spaces will break some badly-written programs and scripts which don't quote file names properly.This said, you can do much worse in terms of file names: That's the reason why Makefile is usually named using a capital M - it's one of the files you want to see first, without scrolling/skipping down trough a-l. One reason to avoid caps in filenames is that sorting order in Unix is case sensitive, so files starting with a capital letter will appear out of order. This reflects, or is reflected in, long standing conventional practices. There is a much more delimited, recommended by POSIX 'Portable Filename Character Set' that doesn't include the space - but it does include upper case! POSIX also specifies the more general restriction regarding 'the slash character and the null byte' elsewhere in the same document.

And of course, let's not forget NetworkManager, even if some of us would prefer to.ġ. Java class files tend to contain capitals by nature, because Java class names do. Definitely a matter of personal preference but it has yet to cause me grief. camelCase) and use it with filenames, e.g., /home/goldilocks/blueSuedeShoes - never mind what's in there. Xauthority.Ī value of capitalizing things at the beginning is that when listed lexicographically they'll come before lower case things - at least, with many tools, and subject to locale. There are also very commonplace traditional files with capitals in them, such as. Most DE's seem to create a slew of capitalized directories in your $HOME ( Downloads, Desktop, Documents - the D is very popular), so there's nothing bizarre about it. Or is this just a matter of personal preference

Individual path elements (file names) are limited to 255 bytes (a possible complication if you are using extended character sets) and complete paths to 4 KiB. The only categorically prohibited characters on *nix systems are NUL (don't worry, it's not on your keyboard, or anyone else's) and /, since that is the path separator. Spaces make specifying filenames on the command line, etc., awkward. There are some tools that may screw up, but hopefully they are few in number at this point in time, since spaces are a virus proliferated by giant consumer proprietary OS corporations and now impossible to avoid. People say you shouldn't spaces in Unix file naming.

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