Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!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: <6410@ut-sally.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 21-Nov-86 16:08:45 EST
Article-I.D.: ut-sally.6410
Posted: Fri Nov 21 16:08:45 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 21-Nov-86 21:49:29 EST
References: <6210@ut-sally.UUCP>
Organization: IEEE P1003 Portable Operating System for Computer Environments Committee
Lines: 32
Approved: jbc@sally.utexas.edu

>From uw-beaver!uw-vlsi!mprvaxa!ubc-vision!utai!utcsri!mcgill-vision!mouse@nike.UUCP Wed Nov 19 04:57:50 1986
Date: Sun, 16 Nov 86 02:46:16 EST
From: der Mouse  <uw-beaver!ubc-vision!mcgill-vision!mouse@nike.UUCP>

> Please, if you support case-dependence, don't give the "mixed case
> filesystems" class of arguments.  The only two arguments you really
> have are (1) it is a "feature" (however dubious) that you can create
> Makefile and makefile as separate files in the same directory, and
> (2) Unix does it this way.

I think everyone arguing over case sensitivity is missing something.
Why treat letters specially?  For example, UNIX treats a and A
differently just as it treats = and % differently.  I see no reason to
restrict filenames to [a-zA-Z0-9] and a few special characters like .
and -; and given that uniformity case folding makes as much (or as
little) sense as folding 0123456789 onto !"#$%&'()* (to pick a
particularly silly example).

I would say that (1) is not particularly useful, but it can be nice to
be able to create files named D.mcgill-X04T2 and D.mcgill-X04t2 in the
same directory.  This is less of an issue, though; it's just as easy to
make a program use base-36 as base-62 or base-126.

					der Mouse

USA: {ihnp4,decvax,akgua,utzoo,etc}!utcsri!mcgill-vision!mouse
     think!mosart!mcgill-vision!mouse
Europe: mcvax!decvax!utcsri!mcgill-vision!mouse
ARPAnet: think!mosart!mcgill-vision!mouse@harvard.harvard.edu


Volume-Number: Volume 8, Number 57