Is starting names with numbers a bad data naming convention?

This convention is just begging to bring out bugs from bad command interpreters. (It is all too easy to confuse initial digits with a number.)

Your software's success today in avoiding such bugs is no guarantee that they won't appear in future releases. This has happened multiple times, over decades, with ESRI's GIS software. This behavior has been extensively reported and amply documented. You need look no further than ESRI's own user forums, which date back a decade. (Deeper searches of old listserver archives will take you back even earlier, to around 1995.) Interesting Google searches include

"GRD ERROR" site:forums.esri.com

filename 8.3 site:forums.esri.com

Together these will provide around a hundred actual examples of the problems such filenames have caused and potentially could cause again.


Avoid Numbers if you can -

Earth Sciences has a good example http://library.oceanteacher.org/OTMediawiki/index.php/General_File-Naming_Convention_for_Earth_Science_Datasets#Filename_Sections_in_the_Order_They_Should_Appear

Spaces can trip you up to - some old DOS based commands for moving files break if space are involved - use "_" (underscores) is a wise think - this stems back to ArcInfo workstation - only 8.3 (8 characters and the file format). These days you can have more - but make it human readable for delivery. avoid dates (most files are timestamped)

*Basically go by this statement Example:

Naming convention rules, as directed by the Microsoft JET engine, which enables Windows applications like ArcMap to read various table formats, include the following:

  • The name must start with a letter, not a number.
  • The name must not contain spaces.
  • The only special character allowed is an underscore.

ArcMap

enter image description here


Any "Open" or "Select" file dialog is going to do sorting assuming the files are named using letters. So if you are using an eight (!) digit unique number for every project file sorting will quickly become illogical. E.g.

1
10
2
20
3 etc. 

Besides there'll be plenty of GIS tools that will still be assuming files that conform to the MS DOS 8.3 filename format.

Using filenames themselves as a key to a project seems a cumbersome requirement at best. It would be far better to store all files in some sort of version control in relevant project repositories.