This is really a difficult question and I have currently no good solution.
But this leads to a decision that we should make now. Never naming physical states just with ..a, ...b, etc.
For these different physical states we should use in the future something like 4567_p1.dat.
If we use such an underscore and then something more descriptive like position 1 it will hopefully prevent us for the future from such a naming chaos that we are now faced.
Maybe we need to introduce something similar for the different variants of a part. We know there are many. Often we do not care about small changes. If we introduce an ending "-v" followed by a number for the variants we are free for many other options.
The number without the "-v" is then a "-v0".
Just two cents from me.
But this leads to a decision that we should make now. Never naming physical states just with ..a, ...b, etc.
For these different physical states we should use in the future something like 4567_p1.dat.
If we use such an underscore and then something more descriptive like position 1 it will hopefully prevent us for the future from such a naming chaos that we are now faced.
Maybe we need to introduce something similar for the different variants of a part. We know there are many. Often we do not care about small changes. If we introduce an ending "-v" followed by a number for the variants we are free for many other options.
The number without the "-v" is then a "-v0".
Just two cents from me.