Thread: Naming Files and Directories

Suppose, you have kept various folders in a cabinet. Then how do you differentiate one folder from the other? Simple. You label each one of these with a name.

so that you can easily identify their contents. In a similar manner, we give names to computer files. File names can be divided into two parts - the first name and the extension name.



First Name

Each directory and file in the hard disk contains a unique name, which is referred to as its first name. In earlier versions of Windows, first names were only 1 to 8 characters long; and there was no space between the characters.

However, in Windows Me/98, there is no such restriction. In these versions, you can have long first names for directories as well as for files and also spaces can be included between the characters.

Extension Name

The second part of a file name is called the extension name. It is used to denote the type of file. The extension names are optional and can be up to three characters long. The first name and the extension name are joined with a dot (.) in between them. You may put spaces before the dot. However, it is advisable to put spaces after the dot. Some valid file names are BACKUP.EXE, PRINT.EXE, Salary Info . DOC, etc. Here the extension .EXE signifies that BACKUP and PRINT are executable files whereas the extension .DOC signifies that Salary Info is a document file.