[jwest]

OS 10.3 Panther.

I read today that it would have the option (feature?) of having cas a sensitive file system.

While I understand the potential value of the system I can't help but like the traditional system 7-9 method.

[MacManMikeOSX]

There already is a CS filesystem in OS 10 it's called UFS.

[Art Vandelay]

Windows doesn't have a case sensitive file system. So, comparing it to Windows is flawed.

[piracy]

Panther will include a case-sensitive version of the Mac OS Extended (HFS+) filesystem.

[Busemann]

[Detrius]

Originally posted by Art Vandelay:
Windows doesn't have a case sensitive file system. So, comparing it to Windows is flawed.

Exactly. Having a case-sensitive file system is a benefit over windows. For us UNIX weenies, this is a GOOD THING.

[Moose]

Originally posted by Detrius:
Exactly. Having a case-sensitive file system is a benefit over windows. For us UNIX weenies, this is a GOOD THING.

I'm a Unix weenie. Case-sensitivity is a Bad Thing.

I don't buy the argument that case, Case, and CASE should all be different, unique files. Any piece of software or procedure that depends on those being three distinct files is fundamentally flawed from a user interaction standpoint.

[WJMoore]

Originally posted by Detrius:
Exactly. Having a case-sensitive file system is a benefit over windows. For us UNIX weenies, this is a GOOD THING.

Yes I agree. I like being able to create files distinguished by case and will welcome this feature.

WM

[Moose]

Originally posted by WJMoore:
Yes I agree. I like being able to create files distinguished by case and will welcome this feature.

Please explain to me why you would want to do this, and what the practical uses of it are.

[Terri]

Originally posted by Moose:
Please explain to me why you would want to do this, and what the practical uses of it are.

I work with *nix web servers and right now I have no way of downloading sites to my local drive as many of the files are named the same with only the case making them different.

I've thought of making a UFS partition but that brings up other hassles.

Anyway it is going to be an option, options are good.

[voodoo]

case sensitivity

[gatorparrots]

You can have it today:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/ext2fsx/

[Art Vandelay]

Originally posted by gatorparrots:
You can have it today:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/ext2fsx/

Or more simply format as UFS. However, you lose Classic compatibility. You don't with the new HFS option

[Moose]

Originally posted by Terri:
I work with *nix web servers and right now I have no way of downloading sites to my local drive as many of the files are named the same with only the case making them different.

You're sidestepping the issue:

Why are the files named that way on the remote end? What possible benefit does that have?

Anyway it is going to be an option, options are good.

Options are good, unless they encourage the Wrong Way To Do Things. That is what this option will do. It's a short-sighted workaround that encourages the perpetuation of bad practice.

[Terri]

Originally posted by Moose:
You're sidestepping the issue:

Why are the files named that way on the remote end? What possible benefit does that have?

I have no idea why they are like that, but they are and I need to be able to download this stuff when I work on it. Mostly the script writers seem to like doing this. Maybe it is because there is already files on the servers named with the same names they want to use so they change the case of them, but I really don't know why some folks do this.

SO my benefit is it allows me to be compatible with and therefor be able to work with files that I have to edit.

It is that or go find and change all the rest of the world that writes scripts and sets up servers this way. Yeah and I'm going to start selling ice from hell when hell freezes over.

[entrox]

Case-sensitivity in the filesystem is typical Unix brain-damage. After all, it is far simpler to compare filenames byte-wise than checking for *gasp* two characters. A perfect example of the Unix mantra "simpler is better" and its historical 90% solutions. Changing this is of course impossible with regards to backwards compatibility, so it will probably stick forever, unless you start from a clean slate like Apple did. I'm thankful for that, having switched because of idiocies like that in GNU/Linux and the rest.

To quote the UNIX-HATERS Handbook:

The traditional Unix file system is a grotesque hack that, over the years, has been enshrined as a "standard" by virtue of its widespread use. Indeed, after years of indoctrination and brainwashing, people now accept Unix's flaws as desired features. It's like a cancer victim's immune system enshrining the carcinoma cell as ideal because the body is so good at making them

[wulf]

I suspect the idea, from Apple's POV, is primarily to provide an option for server admins to more easily migrate their systems to OS X if they have case sensitive files. At the moment the only option they have is using UFS.

I expect, or at least hope, that Apple will not be encouraging normal users to go case sensitive, and it would be an 'advanced', rather than the default, option.

I prefer my Mac to be un-case sensitive, as I imagine most users would. Funnily enough it's taken me ages to get used to the idea that I DON'T have to be CS in the Terminal - I'm so used to having to be CS in the command line from other *nix systems...

[Cipher13]

Originally posted by Moose:
I'm a Unix weenie. Case-sensitivity is a Bad Thing.

I don't buy the argument that case, Case, and CASE should all be different, unique files. Any piece of software or procedure that depends on those being three distinct files is fundamentally flawed from a user interaction standpoint.

Ditto.

Pain in the ass.

[clarkgoble]

The only time case sensitivity is necessary is, as someone mentioned, porting software written by clueless braindead Unix programmers. (i.e. the "I know, let's make the config files the same as the data file names, only uppercase)

To handle those porting issues you are probably best off creating a UFS partition and then mounting in in the main directory tree and creating symlinks. (I've never done that in Darwin - but I assume it is possible)

Really, while I can understand those with these problems, they are all the result of very bad programming practice and probably fairly rare.

Case preserving now, that is important. And Apple does do that. Oddly, while XP is better than 98/2k on this, I still get odd cases in Windows due, I think, to legacy matters from the old DOS world or poor FTP clients. I have a couple of Python scripts designed just to normalize case for these situations.

[utidjian]

Originally posted by Moose:
Please explain to me why you would want to do this, and what the practical uses of it are.

I assume you prefer case insensitivity because it is like.... ???

While case doesn't make a difference in spoken language... it does in written language (filenames). Just as House is different from house, New Town is different from new town Singer from singer and so on. Filenames are like nouns in that they name a thing. There are many types of nouns in language. Since we can use just about any series of characters for naming files and folders... why restrict it to all one case?

[clarkgoble]

Case in written language helps identify sentence breaks and proper nouns. That's it. Further case after the first character is supposed to be lower case. So appealing to natural language to justify mixed case in not a good idea. Further it really is a grammatical marker and not really a word marker.

Jersey and jersey are technically the same word even though the locale is a different meaning than the shirt. It's true that the grammatical structure (including case) helps us determine meaning. But then that's true of things outside of case.

Put a different way, grammar ought to be kept separate. Especially at a file system level.

Further, your example of natural language shows why one should have a case preserving and case insensitive file system. This sentence starts with this and both forms have the same meaning but different cases. If we moved case from the grammar level to the term level then we'd have to treat both instances of "this" differently.

[LaGow]

Originally posted by clarkgoble:
Jersey and jersey are technically the same word even though the locale is a different meaning than the shirt. It's true that the grammatical structure (including case) helps us determine meaning. But then that's true of things outside of case.

It comes down to context. In a file list, House and house mean exactly the same thing. While one could refer to a legislative body, there is no context and thus whatever meaning the file originator had for it is lost, or at least obscured.

[Millennium]

Case-sensitivity: one of the greatest usability nightmares Apple could ever hope to inflict on us. Just because a couple of people are too lazy to come up with unique names for their files doesn't mean that it's a Good Thing.

There is no semantic importance to case in isolated English words. In the context of a larger sentence, perhaps, but not in an isolated word. Even "Singer" is different from "singer" only in certain contexts, and these contexts do not exist in a filesystem.

[Moose]

Originally posted by utidjian:
While case doesn't make a difference in spoken language... it does in written language (filenames). Just as House is different from house, New Town is different from new town Singer from singer and so on. Filenames are like nouns in that they name a thing. There are many types of nouns in language. Since we can use just about any series of characters for naming files and folders... why restrict it to all one case?

I make the following assumptions:

1) You use folders to organize your files. Therefore, you are unlikely to have a file "Singers" about sewing machines in the same folder as a file "singers" about the company in the musical you're producing.

2) If there is ambiguity about which of the above is which, you wouldn't rely on case for the distinction, but instead a longer filename that elaborates. In this case, there is no need for "singer sewing machines" and "SINGER SEWING MACHINES" to be two distinct files.

Case-sensitivity is a crutch that enables people to do counter-intuitive things. It's broken, plain and simple. It is no longer 1970. It is time to move on.

[LaGow]

Originally posted by Millennium:
There is no semantic importance to case in isolated English words. In the context of a larger sentence, perhaps, but not in an isolated word. Even "Singer" is different from "singer" only in certain contexts, and these contexts do not exist in a filesystem.

Exactly. Exactly.

[gorgonzola]

Yeah, I use Unix software all the time, and this doesn't come up *that* often. It is definitely true that it's annoying when you download something that has an "install" and an "INSTALL" file, so it's useful for dealing with that, but please...let's not go overboard. No need to bend over backwards like this.

So is this an option, or is HFS+ just case-sensitive in Panther? If it's an option like Journaling that can be disabled, I suppose it's ok.

A side note, but OS X has one similar problem with filenames: because of file extensions, you can have a "Blah" folder and a "Blah.app" in the same place, and they will both show up as "Blah," which makes them impossible to distinguish. This comes up less, but it's another (tangential) issue.

[clarkgoble]

One other reason we'll never see a case sensitive file system (beyond the obvious) is that there's still a lot of software that assumes it isn't. Lots of code even within fairly rewritten Cocoa apps still has string constants that assume "this folder:this file" is the same as "THIS FOLDER: this file".

If you've had programs crash on a UFS partition, this is 9/10 the reason why.

[utidjian]

Originally posted by Millennium:
Case-sensitivity: one of the greatest usability nightmares Apple could ever hope to inflict on us. Just because a couple of people are too lazy to come up with unique names for their files doesn't mean that it's a Good Thing.

There is no semantic importance to case in isolated English words. In the context of a larger sentence, perhaps, but not in an isolated word. Even "Singer" is different from "singer" only in certain contexts, and these contexts do not exist in a filesystem.

Sure they do... Singers is different in appearance and meaning from singers and is certainly unique in filesystems and in language.

I have a folder called 'Photo albums' within that folder I have many others folders ALL with unique names and meanings. I have a folder within 'Photo albums' that contains all the pictures of the Singer family... I called that folder 'Singers'. I also have a folder within 'Photo albums' that contains pictures of singers (people who sing) and quite naturally I named that folder 'singers'. To me it is immediately obvious which is which. I could have named the 'Singers' folder 'Singer family' or whatever but I didn't have to. But if I DID have to name them something different I would have to think about it and then do it and type in more stuff. So why should I have to?
Why should I prefer to use a filesystem that arbitrarly restricts how I name a file over one that does not restrict me in any way? What benefit does this restriction give me?

[Michel Fortin]

Why not go down to the main issue here: Why are we required to name files differently when they are in the same folder?

Isn't it conterintuitive? In the real world, I can put as much books called "Atlas" as I want on the same shelf. In Mail there can be many emails titled "test" in the same box. If I drag one more email, it dosen't ask me to rename one or if I want to replace one.

What about a filesystem where you drag a new "A" file to a folder where there is already a "A" file whithout asking you questions. Then you can rename the old one to "B" or put it to the trash, or you can leave it there with the same name. If you want to differenciate them, you can always open them and compare or you can use the dates, types, or icons.

[JKT]

Originally posted by Michel Fortin:
Why not go down to the main issue here: Why are we required to name files differently when they are in the same folder?

Isn't it conterintuitive? In the real world, I can put as much books called "Atlas" as I want on the same shelf. In Mail there can be many emails titled "test" in the same box. If I drag one more email, it dosen't ask me to rename one or if I want to replace one.

Take this to its logical conclusion - if you ask someone else (the computer) to then go and fetch you the book called Atlas from that shelf, they are going to get confused when they see twenty books all in the same place called Atlas and potentially bring you back the wrong one. The fetcher would require more detail than just the name to be able to identify exactly which one you meant and currently computers are too stupid to be able to do this with ease

[nickm]

Just because the file system is case sensitive doesn't mean that the Finder or other GUI applications should allow you to put two files in the same folder whose names differ only in case.

This is one way of having your cake and eating it too.

[utidjian]

Originally posted by Michel Fortin:
Why not go down to the main issue here: Why are we required to name files differently when they are in the same folder?

Isn't it conterintuitive? In the real world, I can put as much books called "Atlas" as I want on the same shelf. In Mail there can be many emails titled "test" in the same box. If I drag one more email, it dosen't ask me to rename one or if I want to replace one.

What about a filesystem where you drag a new "A" file to a folder where there is already a "A" file whithout asking you questions. Then you can rename the old one to "B" or put it to the trash, or you can leave it there with the same name. If you want to differenciate them, you can always open them and compare or you can use the dates, types, or icons.

I think this is already handled, somewhat and in some cases, by the Finder. For example if you place two files with the same name on the desktop... as in when you download the same file twice... the first is named (or is it the second?) 'filename' and the second (or is it the first?) is named 'filename.1'. However it is done... the system automatically appends a number to the filename.

In another example... I have a set of files in the same folder called resume.doc, resume.pdf, and resume.txt. In some filemanagers these will all appear as 'resume' but with different icons... one for Word, one for Acrobat Reader, and one for plain text.

There are all sorts of ways that same-named files are handled. Many etxt or docuemt processors might make a file anmed the same as the original but with a ~ prepended... like, 'resume.txt' and '~resume.txt'.

All sorts of possibilities...

[waffffffle]

I like case-insentitivity, being that I'm a Mac user. I wish Apple would expand it even more to the terminal. It is very convenient that I can open files using pico without having to know their capitalization, however I also want the terminal to be able to tab-complete regardless of what I give it.

Example:

If I type: % cd /li and hit TAB I get nothing

If I type: % cd /Li and hit TAB it completes to: %cd /Library/

I want /li to also complete to /Library/

[clarkgoble]

Ask and you shall be answered:

Removing Case Sensitivity from Auto-Completion

Basically you just type

set complete = enhance

in the terminal. You can add this to your .tcshrc or one of the similar places (~/Library/initi/tcsh/ ) as well.

If you use bash add this to ~/.inputrc

set completion-ignore-case On

[Moonray]

Now there's going to be a new optional feature and people start to complain. You all must really be bored or have a too happy life.
If you don't want it, don't turn it on, okay?

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