Linux – Important Facts About Filenames. These article is about Important Facts About Filenames, while you are in a Linux system.
Linux – Important Facts About Filenames
| 1. Filenames that begin with a period character are hidden. This only means that ls will not list them unless you say ls -a. When your account was created, several hidden files were placed in your home directory to configure things for your account. Later on we will take a closer look at some of these files to see how you can customize your environment. In addition, some applications place their configuration and settings files in your home directory as hidden files. |
| 2. Filenames and commands in Linux, like Unix, are case sensitive. The filenames “File1” and “file1” refer to different files. |
| 3. Linux has no concept of a “file extension” like some other operating systems. You may name files any way you like. The contents and/or purpose of a file is determined by other means. Although Unix-like operating system don’t use file extensions to determine the contents/purpose of files, some application programs do. |
| 4. Though Linux supports long filenames which may contain embedded spaces and punctuation characters, limit the punctuation characters in the names of files you create to period, dash, and underscore. Most importantly, do not embed spaces in filenames. If you want to represent spaces between words in a filename, use underscore characters. You will thank yourself later. |