---
title: "Best Practices for using @env-spec"
description: "Recommended best practices for writing .env files with @env-spec"
---

While the parser itself is fairly flexible to maintain backwards-compatibility, we recommend some best practices if you are writing a new .env file or cleaning up an existing one.

- Only use triple quotes for multi-line strings. Either backticks or double quotes are fine, but stay consistent.
- Only use unwrapped values for simple strings that do not contain any spaces or special characters.
- Single quotes do not support expansion, so use them if an item contains $ characters you do not want expanded.
- Stay consistent with quote usage in general
- Be generous with descriptions, unless it is totally obvious
- Add documentation links wherever possible
- For ref expansion, always use brackets - `` GOOD=`pre-${OTHERVAR}` `` `BAD=pre-$OTHERVAR`
- use `# --- dividers ---` to organize sections of related items
- Make all keys `ALL_CAPS`, and don't use any "-" or "."
- Don't use extra whitespace around item definitions (ex: `KEY="good!"` `KEY = "bad!"`)
- Don't use optional `export` prefix
