Re: [BLUG] Mac owner

I know I'm addressing an older post, but my comments appear more
relevant this way.

Scott Blaydes wrote:
> The damn thing wasn't case sensitive. In my mind file, File, and FiLe
> are all referring to different things, but not in OSX. This is one
> bastardization of FreeBSD (that Apple used to model OSX/Darwin off of)
> that I can not accept. Once I found this problem I couldn't take the OS
> seriously anymore, it was just a toy.
>
> Sometimes I feel like a Unix grey beard.
>
>
I go back and forth on case sensitivity.

If you forced all your filenames (and everything is a file in Unix) to
uppercase, would you have any name collisions? Not likely. It's asking
for trouble when you have a file and a directory separated by letter
case because it's such a subtle difference when typing. If you didn't
hold the shift key at the right instant, you accidentally deleted the
wrong thing. If you have two files named File.txt and file.txt, there is
something wrong.

But then again, it matters to both preserve case sensitivity and to keep
the filename code simple. The filesystem regards 'A' and 'a' as
different characters because they have different byte, ascii and UTF
codes. Treating them the same while preserving identity introduces
unneeded complexity to the filesystem code when most of us would rather
work around the issue and have simpler, faster filesystem operations.
Moreover, case sensitivity allows you to describe file type more
succinctly. For example, I leave the first letter of regular filenames
lowercase but I capitalize the first letter of directory names.
Depending on the circumstances, I'll put a filename in all uppercase to
convey importance. I also use capital letters to show word boundaries to
clear up ambiguities (there's a tech help site with a hyphen in the url
so you know they don't perform gender reassignment surgery).

In the end, I don't care significantly one way or the other. I'll use
whatever is the standard on the system I'm using. If you care enough to
think less of a system over such a detail, then this is what I think of
you: http://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/archive/mundane-name

-Barry
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