Underscores are also ugly and hard to type quickly, whereas dashes are easy and the same width as a space, or only slightly longer. Underscores at 2-3 spaces wide make words look disconnected, even if they’re otherwise less obtrusive.
Of course you could simply use + and ban the use of it in filenames, with appropriate server support. (Or be prepared to use %2B.)
I’m-more-concerned-about-which-one-is-more-readable.
I’m_more_concerned_about_which_one_is_more_readable.
I tend to prefer the underscore because it’s below the letters, as if in an underline. But I don’t think there’s a right answer. Just preference.
Another difference between underscores and dashes: very often, you can’t see underscores when the words are underlined (as in most hyperlinks). Sometimes this is an advantage, but in most cases it isn’t.
2 little notes from a unixish perspective (I thought I’d share because I’m reading your blog to get the windowsish perspective):
\w is not portable regex, but rather from the preg (perl regex) set.
Also, spaces in file names, esp. as arguments to shell scripts, are easily lost because once inside the script, evalling a string more than once makes it “fall apart”, quoted or not.
The solution there is the magic variable “$@” (quotes included) which evals to all positional arguments, properly quoted one by one.
I like this one better:
I’MMOR~1
I remember a quote somewhere, something like :
8 chars ought to be enough for anybody. 
nah, sorry to low …
We switched from _ to - a few years ago for usability reasons: some folks don’t see an _ in a URL and assume it’s a space.
Here’s another vote for ‘.’ as a word separator in filenames (does UNICODE call that a FULL STOP? - actually, it does).
I have no in-depth analysis for why, it’s just what I have always used to avoid the evils of spaces in filenames.
this-is-a-long-filename
this.is.a.long.filename
this_is_a_long_filename
I still like it better.
This was really useful. I’m working a file to convert search friendly urls into a keyword search on my website. I was going to use underscores but now I’m going to use dashes or underscores. Thanks.
I, too, hate the spaces! You don’t know how badly I’ve wanted to change “Program Files” to ProgramFiles or Program_Files.
That being said, what about camel/pascal casing? Seems like that would be another option for this discussion. I wonder how the readability changes?
The space/dash/underscore self-deliberation comes up frequently as I’m ripping CD’s to mp3s and trying to get a good filename. I’ve resolved to using _ for spaces and – for a delimiter.
I guess I would argue that the _ makes more sense as a space, but maybe that’s because that’s what I’ve always used.
I agree that it’s nice to adhere to a standard, but if there are good reasons to throw the standard out the window, why not consider it? Not that I’ve come up with good reasons…
renaming “Program Files” can break some archaic installers / updates so I wouldn’t risk it
I personally simply add a Junction (Symbolic Link) that maps Program Files to Program_Files (so they point at the same place on a NTFS disc) and I can then refer to it in either way. Very handy
Interestingly i’ve heard Vista will be dropping all the two word directoring and moving from Program Files - Programs, My Documents - Documents etc.
p.s. util to help create junctions: http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/Junction.html
Jeff, that’s terrible advice. If programmers don’t use the same characters in their filenames that their users use then how is software ever going to work properly?
W3C’s CSS validator is broken because somebody didn’t think to check it with a URL that has a %20 in it: http://www.kirit.com/W3C%27s%20CSS%20validation%20service
Microsoft’s Response.Redirect() is broken because it can’t work out which bit of a URL is which, also due to sloppy encoding practiced by most web developers: http://www.kirit.com/Response.Redirect%20and%20encoded%20URIs
And again a problem with encoding means that 404 handlers on IIS are broken too: http://www.kirit.com/Errors%20in%20IIS%27s%20custom%20404%20error%20handling
And because you’ve reverse engineered Google’s software doesn’t seem a good reason either. Sooner or later they’ll change their implementation and then where will you be? If Google considers a hyphen as a space then Google is broken. Sooner or later they’ll fix that (one hopes).
One comment suggests ‘+’, like Technorati uses in tags? That’s even more broken – the ‘+’ is used as a space substitute in query strings but NOT in file specifications, a bug in nearly every URL parser I’ve found.
“If you use an underscore ‘_’ character, then Google will combine the two words on either side into one word.”
Personally, I feel this is Google’s problem, not mine. But that’s just my opinion. I will only go so far to accomodate Google. (And it shows; their cache of my site is a mess, because my CMS throws insane session cookies at Googlebot, in the URL’s querystring. I haven’t gotten around to fixing it yet… see previous comment.)
Here’s another vote for ‘.’ as a word separator in filenames (does UNICODE call that a FULL STOP? - actually, it does).
One problem with period is that it makes it difficult to figure out where the file extension begins, eg:
this.is.a.html.file.html
Spaces in URLs are bad because they have to be replaced with that ugly unreadable %20 notation. But what exactly is wrong with spaces in file names? As long as you don’t need to share a file with backwards Unix systems that don’t understand file names with spaces I don’t see the problem. Where do you ever enter a file name?
In a file selection dialog. Standard Windows file dialogs don’t care about spaces. No quotes are necessary.
On the command line. Auto-completion automatically puts quotes around your file name as necessary.
In a program’s source code. Strings must be surrounded by quotes anyway, ergo spaces are not a problem.
In some text storage facility, such as the registry or an XML file or whatever. Any well-designed storage format respects embedded spaces, so once again no problem.
The only problematic situation I can come up with (other than sharing with Unix systems) are batch files. That’s the only time you have to consciously remember to use quotes for file names with spaces. And even that’s no longer true when you upgrade to Windows PowerShell!
C’mon guys! Either computers work for you or you work for them.
Stick with spaces.
There_is_a_reason_that_we_don’t_write_our_sentences_like_this. There-is-also-a-reason-that-we-don’t-write-our-sentences-like-this. And.this.is.a.joke!
I’ll let you hardcore filename worshipers use dashes, dots, and underscores. I’ll use spaces.
You forgot the Wiki style: no spaces!
ThereIsAReasonThatWeDon’tWriteOurSentencesLikeThis
Which I suppose is what other posters were referring to with “Camel Case style”, but I think of this as Wiki-style…
There is one downside to using ‘-’ over ‘_’. The former is commonly used in language. What about double barrel names for example?
Camilla Parker-Bowles
Camilla_Parker-Bowles
Camilla-Parker-Bowles
Now I’ve lost the difference between ’ ’ and ‘-’. I think Bit-Jockey makes a great point but sadly, I still use underscores. A habit I just can’t break, mainly because spaces really suck in Urls.
File names and folder names are not sentences. I always laugh when people bring up the prose arguments. Apples and oranges. File names and procedures/functions in programming languages are short little blurbs of text. They are not English sentences. There is plenty of whitespace all over your screen and between windows/scrollbars/wasted space areas. In English text, there is not plenty of whitespace inside the paragraph.
So please, don’t compare apples to oranges. The same arguments are used in programming languages. Cee programmers tend to argue that underscores are easier to read. I find that the underscores add more symbols to the already symbol infested obfuscated Cee code.
Let me repeat: file names and folder names are not English sentences.
Your first and last name is not an English sentence either. JohnDoe or John-Doe or John_Doe is just as easy to read. If we were discussing English sentences, then john_doe_went_to_the_park_to_see_trees would be easier to read. But we are not discussing English sentences.
If your file and folder names are becoming so long that they are English sentences, then you need to rename them. My Program Files In That Cool Windows Directory is not a good folder name.
I am not a programmer, so this issue doesn’t impact me on that front. The reality is that encountering a name with substitutes for spaces offends all my esthetic sensibilities; it just looks hideous, especially the underscores. Usability also goes down the drain with anything that requires such frequent use of the shift key.
Probably this would be a non-issue except for stone-age, intolerant Unix. We can also blame Microsoft, Apple and all the rest of the computing world for implementing long filenames without carefully considering all the implications. This is part of the ongoing campaign to make computers “user friendly” so they can be operated by complete novices, but it has resulted in a giant tower of Babel.
As happens each time everybody sits in their corner and does their own thing, we now have a big mess which will probably never be resolved.
I agree with the above comment that computers are supposed to work for us; we shouldn’t be required to adapt our lifestyle to suit them.
In this case, the number of space-intolerant scenarios is relatively small, so it is illogical that we all have to modify our behaviour to cater for them.
In situations like this, a de facto standard usually emerges and saves the day. Since none of the conventions being used today is acceptable, this unfortunately doesn’t look like happening any time soon.
While I agree its very annoying to put spaces in file paths and your Google dashes finding is very interesting and compelling, I just found out how to pass references to annoying file paths in Outlook 2003.
Enclose the path in angle brackets. Its fabulous. It can be done after pasting in the horrid path.