4.1 Directory Hierarchies

First, let’s talk about how to properly structure a folder hierarchy.

The highest-ranking folder is generally called the root directory, or sometimes the top-level folder. We’ll call it the root directory here. This folder will contain all of the subfolders and files related to a particular project, including its data, analysis, lab reports etc. It will also contain what is called a readme file.

The structure should look something like the following:

├── Project-Folder/
|   ├── Experiment-Data/
|   |   ├── File-1
|   |   ├── File-2
|   ├── Experiment-Analysis/
|   |   ├── File-1
|   ├── Experiment-Report/
|   |   ├── File-1
|   |   ├── File-2

Here, our root folder is called Project-Folder and it contains three subdirectories, one for data, Experiment-Data, one for analyses, Experiment-Analysis, and one for a report Experiment-Report. Each subdirectory then contains one or many files.