Case sensitive file names (8 bit file names)

[Moderator, John Quarterman]

From: seismo!enea!tut!intrin.uucp!jty (Jyrki Yli-Nokari)
Date: Mon, 27 Oct 86 20:54:42 -0200
Organization: Intrinsic Oy, Tampere, Finland

There seems to be misunderstanding about Unix not accepting 8 bit characters
in file names.

I would like to point out that Unix is perfectly happy to include
ANY 8 bit characters in the file name, EXCEPT slash '/' or null '\0'.

[ Depends on which system you're referring to:  some really do
strip the eighth bit in the file system, not in the shell.
Though there are many shells that also strip that bit,
as you point out.  -mod ]

The REAL problem is the shell that strips the 8:th bit off for its
own purposes.

At least IBM's AIX and HP's HP-UX have fixed this problem.

Regardless of the case sensitivity we MUST start from the fact
that characters are made out of at least eight bits, not seven = USASCII.

Now that I use 7 bit modified ascii character set,
the O umlaut in my terminal is really a backslash '\'
as far as Unix is concerned.

Try explaning that to a casual end-user, who wants to create a file
called '\rkki'.

Volume-Number: Volume 7, Number 94