Explanation of "Case-sensitive"

Sean Fagan seanf at sco.COM
Tue May 2 09:26:34 AEST 1989


In article <59 at ajfcal.UUCP> tony at ajfcal.UUCP (Tony Field) writes:
>In article <39708 at think.UUCP>, barmar at think.COM (Barry Margolin) writes:
>> And the reason Unix is case-sensitive is that it was modeled after
>> Multics, which is also case-sensitive.  I suspect that the reason
>> Multics was made case-sensitive was that it seemed more modern.
>      .. etc ..

Another reason (or advantage) in Unix's case-sensitivity is that filenames
can have any character other than '/' and '\0'.  Every OS I've seen that had
case-*in*sensitivity would only allow a small subset of those.

Of course, you generally can't have a variable, in C, called 'M-fooM-bar'
(where M-<x> is Meta-<x>)... 8-)


-- 
Sean Eric Fagan  | "An acid is like a woman:  a good one will eat
seanf at sco.UUCP   |  through your pants." -- Mel Gibson, Saturday Night Live
(408) 458-1422   | Any opinions expressed are my own, not my employers'.



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