Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!ucbcad!nike!think!husc6!ut-sally!std-unix From: std-unix@ut-sally.UUCP (Guest Moderator, John B. Chambers) Newsgroups: mod.std.unix Subject: Re: Case sensitive file names Message-ID: <5912@ut-sally.UUCP> Date: Sun, 5-Oct-86 18:23:17 EDT Article-I.D.: ut-sally.5912 Posted: Sun Oct 5 18:23:17 1986 Date-Received: Mon, 6-Oct-86 05:41:17 EDT Organization: IEEE 1003 Portable Operating System for Computer Environments Committee Lines: 60 Approved: jbc@sally.utexas.edu Date: Fri, 3 Oct 86 20:07:32 edt From: Robert Viduya Subject: Re: Case sensitive file names > Date: Mon, 29 Sep 86 12:33:36 edt > From: mark@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@pyr.ocs.gatech.edu Office of Computing Services (404) 894-4660 Georgia Institute of Technology Atlanta, Georgia 30332 Volume-Number: Volume 7, Number 17