Xref: utzoo comp.mail.uucp:1046 news.sysadmin:581
Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!nrl-cmf!mailrus!umix!honey
From: honey@umix.cc.umich.edu (Peter Honeyman)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp,news.sysadmin
Subject: Re: Problems with pathalias
Message-ID: <3766@umix.cc.umich.edu>
Date: 27 Feb 88 01:09:35 GMT
References: <590@acornrc.UUCP> <2057@ncr-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM> <615@acornrc.UUCP>
Reply-To: honey@citi.umich.edu (Peter Honeyman)
Organization: Center for Information Technology Integration, Univ of Michigan
Lines: 27
UUCP-Path: {uunet,rutgers}!umix!honey


Bob Weissman writes:
>It turns out to be my own damn fault for running pathalias with the
>"-i" (fold all names into lowercase) switch.  
>...
>Moral: don't run pathalias with -i.  I was confused because
>the man page claims -i folds "host names" into lowercase, and doesn't
>say anything about network names.

no!  the -i flag should be the default, without a way to override it!

host name comparisons should always be case insensitive, but this
would be too costly -- strcmp is number five in my pathalias profiling
hit list.  although it weighs in at only 5% or so of run time, strcmp
is called several hundred thousand times.  i fear that a case-
insensitive strcmp would would be much more costly, both because of the
extra work it must do, and because it misses the assembler library
routines common in most breeds of unix.  so the -i flag is a
compromise, but one i consider vital to proper behavior.

i maintain that the ICOnet definition is brain-damaged, and should be
fixed.  i will, at your suggestion, fix the man page to eliminate the
confusion.  note that pathalias can't tell whether a name is a net or
a host until all the input is consumed,  e.g.,

thing host		# it's a floor wax!
thing = {a, b, c}	# no, it's a dessert topping!

	peter