Markdown All in One Documentation

File naming

Examples

  • i-disposable

  • json5

  • markdown-engine

  • markdown-it-task-list

Description

/^[a-z][a-z0-9]*(-[a-z0-9]+)*$/
1

Unless conventions apply, the base name of a file and the name of a directory use kebab-case.

This roughly follows the rules of npm package nameopen in new window, and adds a few restrictions to ensure interoperability.

It's recommended to only use lower case ASCII letters in each word:

/^[a-z]+(-[a-z]+)*$/
1

Entries with conventions, such as README, are not affected by this rule.

Background

The printable ASCII characters are still the safest set nowadays.

Case sensitivity is also a big concern. URI is case-sensitive. Some file systems are case-sensitive, while others are not. Mixed case can frequently lead to unexpected behavior in access, searching, comparison, and sorting.

Some projects choose snake_case. But renaming is painful, since most file explorers and text editors don't recognize underscores as word separators.

Conventional file names

This article does not apply to those with conventions. This section lists some well-known ones.

Entries:

  • .github

  • CHANGELOG

  • CITATION

  • CODE_OF_CONDUCT

  • CODEOWNERS

  • CONTRIBUTING

  • LICENSE

  • README

Environments:

  • .NET

  • Git

  • Java

  • MATLAB

  • Python

  • Ruby

  • Vue

  • Webpack

  • Wolfram