Files and Folders on your Computer

Your computer has a system of folders (directories) that contain individual files. For the rest of the semester, you are going to store all files and material related to this class under a single course folder on your computer. Here are some resources for navigating files and folders on your computer:

Making a Course Folder on your Computer

Go ahead and make a new folder on your computer called working-with-data. I would recommend choosing a location on your computer that is fairly easy to navigate to and find. For instance, both Windows and Mac come with an existing Documents directory. If you navigate to this folder you can then create a folder inside Documents named working-with-data. Your working-with-data is going to be your “parent” folder moving forward for this class. Any work you do, make sure that it is saved under this folder.

Organizing Your Files and Folders

Now that you’ve created your course folder, let’s practice creating and organizing a more complex set of folders and files:

  • Create a new folder inside working-with-data called my-photos
  • Inside my-photos, create two more folders:
    • animals (for animal photos)
    • landscapes (for nature/landscape photos)
  • Download these practice images and save them in the correct folders:
  • Your folder structure should now look like this:
working-with-data
    my-photos
        animals
            racoon.jpeg
        landscapes
            gs104.jpg
            sunset 1.jpg

Naming Files and Folders

Having the right names for your files and folders is surprisingly important! Here are some key rules to follow:

  • Never use spaces in file or folder names - use hyphens (-) or underscores (_) instead
  • Use descriptive names that tell you what the file or folder contains
  • Keep names short but meaningful
  • Use all lowercase letters

Looking at your landscapes folder, you have two files with problematic names:

  • gs104.jpg - this name isn’t descriptive
  • sunset beach.jpg - this name contains a space

To see the issue with spaces in filenames, click on the original link I gave you to download the image sunset 1.jpg. Take a look at the URL in your browser - it should end in sunset%201.jpg NOT sunset 1.jpg. The weird text in the middle is a result of the space in the filename and can throw things off if you were trying to actually work with this file computationally. Instead of spaces, I would recommend using hyphens (-)

Let’s fix these on your computer! Rename both files to follow correct naming conventions:

  • Rename gs104.jpg to mountains.jpg
  • Rename sunset 1.jpg to beach-sunset.jpg

Your folder structure should now look like this:

working-with-data
    my-photos
        animals
            racoon.jpeg
        landscapes
            mountains.jpg
            beach-sunset.jpg

These might seem like small changes, but clear naming will become crucial as you work with more complex files throughout the semester. Good naming helps you:

  • Find files quickly
  • Know what’s in a file without having to open it
  • Share files with others
  • Avoid technical problems that can arise from spaces or special characters in filenames
Too easy?
Experiment with trying to rename some of your image files or folders only using the command line (instructions)