title: Best practices for custom file structures
body: <p>I'm currently quite curious in how other programmers organise data into files.
  Can anyone recommend any good articles or books on best practices for creating file structures?</p>
  
  <p>For example, if you've created your own piece of software for whatever purpose, do you leave the saved data as plain text, serialize it, encode to xml, and why do you do this?</p>
  
  <p>Are there any secrets I've missed?</p>