Re: Case sensitivity (was Re: no title)

["Warren W. Gay VE3WWG" <ve3wwg@cogeco.ca>]

Hyman Rosen wrote:
> AG wrote:
>> I'm not an experienced Unix guru so I have
>> to try and see if a command works. So I type
>> something like:  x/yz - doesn't work. So I type
>> X/yz - still doesn't work. So I call in an expert
>> who tells me that it should be x/Yz (not X/Yz
>> which I've also tried). When questioned *why*,
>> the answer is a shrug and a simple reply "that's Unix"
> 
> You could try reading the manual. (Also, x/yz is not like
> any UNIX command, so you have boiled down the original
> problem beyond anything that an experienced UNIX guru
> could explain to you correctly.) UNIX command names are
> nearly always lower case, but their option may be of
> both cases, especially when there are many.

One should be aware that UNIX file names are not _always_
case sensitive. For example, if you mount a FAT file system
under Linux, the names will be presented in lowercase, and
will allow opens/creates with MiXed CaSe. Yet after file
creation, a ls on the name will show lowercase.

In more recent times, I have thought that perhaps UNIX/Linux
file systems would be better off caseless, with the proviso
that they'd be shown in one case only (lowercase of course,
in the spirit of UNIX). Yet to do so now, would be silly
because this would break a number of contributed programs.

I have always hated the way that Windows stores & displays
mixed case. I would be much happier if they were presented
in once case only (or at least had the option of being
presented so). But then, I've always hated file names that
had bad things like blanks in them anyway. Any file system
that uses a backslash in it is silly anyway ;-)

-- 
Warren W. Gay VE3WWG
http://home.cogeco.ca/~ve3wwg