On Sunday, Nov 23, 2003, at 12:04 US/Pacific, Jerry Rocteur wrote:
A UNIX system that is not case sensitive doesn't sound like a UNIX system to me.. I wonder what else Apple is going to change in UNIX, soon we'll be cd \etc\httpd
It seems to me that there's no good reason to preserve case insensitivity in Mac OSX. The primary concern might be that Finder's toolbar and Find dialog (Command-F) do a case-insensitive search by default, since users might be accustomed to this. No?
It's not OSX that's case insensitive, but the filesystem. When you mount a CD, the names on it are restricted to those allowed by the CD standard and the extensions in use. If you manage to mount a DOS floppy, DOS name restrictions will apply. Currently OSX works best with HFS+ and gives you that by default, and that means no case sensitivity. Names on UFS filesystems are fully case sensitive.
There are two problems with going case sensitive. The first is that standard HFS+ doesn't do it, and lots of Mac stuff depends on other attributes of HFS+ that UFS (or any other case sensitive F/S) doesn't support. The other is that (probably) just as many users regard case sensitivity as a ridiculous idea as regard it as essential. At a discussion between a handfull of us over coffee during a usergroup meeting at Apple (UK), those of us preferring case sensitivity were in a minority (well 2 to 3 - ish). The availability of case sensitivity under OSX Server shows that a modification to HFS+ is possible, but it's not standard HFS+ so who can say how desktop applications would survive with it.
David
-- David Ledger - Freelance Unix Sysadmin in the UK. Chair of HPUX SysAdmin SIG of hpUG technical user group (www.hpug.org.uk) [EMAIL PROTECTED] (also [EMAIL PROTECTED]) www.ivdcs.co.uk
