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From: std-unix@ut-sally.UUCP (Moderator, John Quarterman)
Newsgroups: mod.std.unix
Subject: Re: case sensitive filenames
Message-ID: <6211@ut-sally.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 3-Nov-86 15:12:11 EST
Article-I.D.: ut-sally.6211
Posted: Mon Nov  3 15:12:11 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 4-Nov-86 05:46:56 EST
References: <5860@ut-sally.UUCP> <6107@ut-sally.UUCP>
Organization: IEEE P1003 Portable Operating System for Computer Environments Committee
Lines: 31
Approved: jsq@sally.utexas.edu

From: seismo!utai!utcsri!mcgill-vision!mouse
Date: Thu, 30 Oct 86 05:28:02 EST

In article <6107@ut-sally.UUCP> mckenney@sri-unix.arpa (Paul E. McKenney) writes:
[that what he said above leaves unaddressed]
> o	Whether the eighth bit on characters within a filename should be
> 	significant.  The developers of BSD 4.[23] must have had some good
> 	reason for making it insignificant, but the only reason that comes
> 	to mind is that most terminals cannot easily specify the eighth bit
> 	(just like some older terminals cannot easily specify lower
> 	case!).

There are also programs (the shell comes to mind) that use the eighth
bit for their own purposes.  I believe the shell uses it as a quote
indicator.  Although it is not relevant to filenames, I seem to recall
seeing some code along the lines of curses that used the eighth bit to
indicate highlighting.  Also, all the 7-bit characters can be specified
to (say) rm by careful use of quotes or backslashes.  With most
terminals, this is not possible for 8th-bit-set characters, and even if
the terminal and tty driver could handle it, as I implied above the
shell would strip it anyway.  So you *couldn't* do anything with such
files.

					der Mouse

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Volume-Number: Volume 8, Number 26