Naming conventions for folders and files

To make this easier to remember we choose the same name conventions for file names as for objects. We acknowledge that these rules sometimes clash with requirements from other sources (e.g. DESCRIPTION in an R package, README.md on GitHub, .gitignore for git, …). In such case we allow the file names as required by R, git or GitHub. When check_filename() does unfairly not allow a certain file or folder name, then please open an issue on GitHub and motivate why this should be allowed.

Rules for folder names

  • Folder names should only contain lower case letters, numbers and underscore (_).
  • They can start with a single dot (.).

Rules for file names

  • Base names should only contain lower case letters, numbers and underscore (_).
  • File extensions should only contains lower case letters and numbers. Exceptions: file extensions related to R must have an upper case R (.R, .Rmd, .Rd, .Rnw, .Rproj).

Rules for graphical file names

  • Currently applies to files with these extensions: csl, eps, gif, jpg, jpeg, pdf, png, ps, svg, tiff, tif and wmf.
  • Same rules except that you need to use a dash (-) as separator instead of an underscore (_). We need this exception because underscores cause problems with graphics files in certain situations.