Let’s Have a Lot of Brevity

The ancient eight-dot-three limitation has long been lifted. Given expanded freedom in naming files, some of us get a little carried away. Here’s a file from one of the author’s clients, slightly altered to protect the innocent: SSGC holiday wreath photos and logos -- Publisher (10-19-05).pub. Because spaces, periods, and parentheses also count, that’s a 64-character filename. Windows and Macintosh platforms currently allow a total of 255 characters, which is perhaps overly generous. That’s an entire paragraph.

While Windows allows filenames of 255 characters, it limits a total path designation to 260 characters. Path designation is the literal pathway to the file’s location. For example, a file named Test.doc stored at the root level of a PC’s C drive would have a path designation of C:Test.doc, a total of 11 characters. File extensions like .doc or .pdf are included in the total character count for a filename.

If you’re a Mac OS X user, you may not think of Mac OS 9 as another platform, but in many ways it is. Users of Mac OS 9 are limited to 31 character filenames, so if you’re sharing files with colleagues who are still languishing under Mac OS 9, you’ll have to take that into consideration, and keep your filenames appropriately brief. Think of filenaming as a game: What’s the shortest name you can think of but still find useful?