Hiding files and folders & e.g., not i.e.

[Marc Stewart]

Rev. 788
Ch.2, § "Creating new folders", p. 30 (PDF p. 32)
Types: suggestion, grammar

Manual states:
If you wish to hide certain folders or files, place a dot (.) in front of the name (i.e., “.Personal Finances”).

This is true, but is it really the best way?
Creating a text file called .hidden and typing the files and subdirectories you wish to hide on separate lines is, I believe, a much neater solution, allowing more naming freedom; it's also the only viable way to hide Windows system directories.

For example, on my dual-boot laptop I have in /mnt/WindowsHD/.hidden:
$Recycle.Bin
System Volume Information
hiberfil.sys
pagefile.sys
msdia80.dll
System Recovery
Windows

Renaming any of these so the name starts with a dot would be extremely unwise, but leaving them always visible almost invites mishaps.

So I suggest mention of this method in addition to the start-name-with-dot method.

The quoted text also uses "i.e." (that is) when "e.g." (for example) is likely the better Latin abbreviation.

[Jason Cook (jasoncook599)]

the way you recommend work in nautilus but not when using the "ls" command. I may or may not work using other file managers so I don't think that this should be included.

[Jason Cook (jasoncook599)]

I have verified that it doesn't work in Dolphin.