Learning, using and designing filenames and command paradigms†

Abstract

What are names for computer files and commands like? How do people go about naming them? How do the properties such names can have affect the ease with which they can be learned and used? This paper sketches a general view of names and naming in which the linguistic forms that names take are deliberately structured to reflect functional interrelations between their referents. This view is then applied to an analysis of personal filenames chosen by CMS users and to a series of experimental studies of command languages.