Case sensitive file names

[Guest Moderator, John B. Chambers]

Date: Fri, 3 Oct 86 20:07:32 edt
From: Robert Viduya <gatech!gitpyr!robert at seismo.UUCP>
Subject: Re: Case sensitive file names

> Date: Mon, 29 Sep 86 12:33:36 edt
> From: mark at cbosgd.att.com (Mark Horton)
> Subject: Case sensitive file names

I've found a useful rule to be used in deciding cases like this is to
decide in favor of the more general and flexible.  A couple of times
I've been guilty of saying, "Well, I can't think of any good reason for
this particular feature, so I'll get rid of it", only to discover,
later on, a good reason for a feature.  I don't believe in artificial
limits mainly because the person who implements the limit generally
hasn't considered ALL possible reasons for going beyond the limit.

> I think this is a mistake.  UNIX is the only major operating system
> that treats things like file names, logins, host names, and commands
> as case sensitive.  The net effect of this is that users get
> confused, since they have to get the capitalization right every time.
> To avoid confusion, everybody always just uses lower case.  So
> there are few, if any, benefits from a two-case system, and any time
> anyone tries to do something that isn't pure lower case, it causes
> confusion for somebody and often breaks some program.

It isn't difficult to explain Unix's case-sensitivity to a user and,
once explained, the case-sensitivity tends to be one of the few things
a user remembers without having to be reminded.  What confusion may be
caused by case-sensitivity is lost in the much greater confusion caused
by trying to learn a new operating system.

> 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.  Given the problems in the above
> paragraph, plus politics as usual, I think it is unlikely that
> other systems will be changed to have case sensitive file systems.
> After all, it's not like it was easiest to make the VMS filesystem
> case insensitive - that took extra effort on their part.

But, on the other hand, adopting a VMS or MS-DOS filesystem to coexist
with Unix in a Unix environment would be trivial as far as filenames
are concerned.  The fact that Unix allows *any* ascii character in it's
filenames (except for the path seperator, '/', and the string
terminator, NUL), makes it almost ideal for adopting other, foreign
filesystems to it because most of the special graphic characters (!, @, #,
$, and etc..) can already be represented in a filename without having to
be mapped to something else (unlike other, more restrictive, operating
systems).


				robert

---
Robert Viduya					     robert at pyr.ocs.gatech.edu

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Volume-Number: Volume 7, Number 17