Case sensitive file names

[Guest Moderator, John B. Chambers]

Date: Sat, 4 Oct 86 16:54:37 PDT
From: hoptoad!gnu at lll-crg.ARPA (John Gilmore)
Subject: Re: Case sensitive file names

> From: mark at cbosgd.att.com (Mark Horton)
> Another problem is that emulations on other operating systems,
> such as VMS or MS DOS, will become impossible without drastic
> changes to their file systems.

I think we should eliminate the hierarchical file system too (-:).
After all, VM/370 doesn't use it, nor does CP/M.  It would be too hard
to emulate.  (Thank Bog that MSDOS and the Mac added the feature, and
that Atari and Amiga started that way, or somebody might actually take
me seriously!)  We could consider getting rid of devices-as-files, though --
there's an idea that none of those people have picked up :-).

> After all, it's not like it was easiest to make the VMS filesystem
> case insensitive - that took extra effort on their part.

Their feeling it was worth the work for VMS doesn't make it right for Unix.

> I think it's a mistake to move in the direction of requiring other
> operating systems to become case sensitive.

Nobody is requiring anything of any other operating system.  We're
defining a *new* operating system here.

My impression was that the "new operating system" was supposed to look
very much like the set of features-in-common to the various Unix operating
systems.  If we are trying to standardize an environment that will
run under other operating systems, somebody better tell us quick.
I thought the "Portable Operating System" stuff was just a legalese hack
because we can't use the trademarked name "Unix".  Was I wrong?

>                                                        But I think
> it would be a mistake to require other systems to change if they
> are to support a POSIX emulation on top of them.  (On the other hand,
> it may be reasonable to expect other operating systems to support
> more general file name lengths and character sets, rather than things
> like the MS DOS 8+3 convention.  But in practice, this may be too
> painful to fix.)

Either they will implement POSIX compatability or they won't.  If we
define POSIX systems to be case insensitive, MSDOS would not qualify
anyway, since you can't use an arbitrary 14-character file name.  VMS
would have problems with files whose names contained [, ], or colon,
etc.  So they will have to provide some form of file name translation,
and they should handle the case issue at the same time they handle the
length and allowable character set issues.

Volume-Number: Volume 7, Number 20