Using clean/smudge scripts from repository

[Bob Bell <b_git@thebellsplace.com>]

I'm setting up a clean/smudge filter for a repository.  In local testing 
it seemed to work well.  To allow for the clean/smudge scripts to be 
updated as the source changes, I put the clean/smudge scripts into the 
repository, and configured the filter in my ~/.gitconfig file to be 
simply "./filter --clean" and "./filter --smudge".

However, when cloning a fresh repository instance, that's breaking 
because a file with the filter set by .gitattributes is getting created 
BEFORE the filter script itself exists.

Playing around with things, I realized that alphabetically the filter 
script came after the filename being filtered.  So I renamed the filter 
to __filter, and that appears to have changed to order in which contents 
are created during "git clone".

Is this a proper solution, or did I just "luck out"?  Am I perhaps doing 
something foolish?

Thanks,
Bob