From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,8d472879e3f609e0 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2003-06-09 10:11:41 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!wn14feed!wn13feed!worldnet.att.net!207.35.177.252!nf3.bellglobal.com!nf1.bellglobal.com!nf2.bellglobal.com!news20.bellglobal.com.POSTED!not-for-mail Message-ID: <3EE4BC3D.3060004@cogeco.ca> From: "Warren W. Gay VE3WWG" User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.0.2) Gecko/20030208 Netscape/7.02 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Case sensitivity (was Re: no title) References: <20619edc.0306021018.6ee4dd09@posting.google.com> <1054649187.11497@master.nyc.kbcfp.com> <20619edc.0306031034.6a2f5f25@posting.google.com> <1054666439.685312@master.nyc.kbcfp.com> <1054735867.264510@master.nyc.kbcfp.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Date: Mon, 09 Jun 2003 12:56:29 -0400 NNTP-Posting-Host: 198.96.223.163 X-Complaints-To: abuse@sympatico.ca X-Trace: news20.bellglobal.com 1055177789 198.96.223.163 (Mon, 09 Jun 2003 12:56:29 EDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 09 Jun 2003 12:56:29 EDT Organization: Bell Sympatico Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:38866 Date: 2003-06-09T12:56:29-04:00 List-Id: 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