Re: Changing the case of a filename?
Re: Changing the case of a filename?
- Subject: Re: Changing the case of a filename?
- From: "John C. Randolph" <email@hidden>
- Date: Thu, 16 Aug 2001 02:50:34 -0700
On Thursday, August 16, 2001, at 12:59 AM, Mark T wrote:
Let me also say, that a case-insensitive file system is a brain-dead
idea, and that whoever was responsible for it back in the mid-80's
should be tortured with a resource fork applied repeatedly to a
sensitive part of his anatomy.
Okay, this is kind of getting off the topic of Cocoa development...
but I think that a case-insensitive file system is a great idea. The
average not-technically-minded person (who is surely the kind of
person the Macintosh is designed for) doesn't want to be trying to
remember whether they had a capital letter in their file name, or
which of several otherwise identical filenames in a folder is the one
he/she wants to open. Perhaps a case-sensitive file system is helpful
when using a case-sensitive development environment, but not in any
other situation that I can think of. Personally, I don't particularly
like case-sensitive programming languages either (although I'm still
going to use them of course, it's not that big a deal) because it can
be annoying trying to remember which variables/class names/methods etc
have capital letters, and where. This is helped by the fact that there
are usually conventions concerning whereTheCapitalsAre, but I still
don't particularly like it.
I have to say that I agree. I can't think of a single situation where
the usefulness of a case-sensitive filesystem would outweigh the
drawbacks. What possible reason could you need for saving multiple
files in the same directory with identical names, save for the
capitalization? Names can be 255 letters long. Use different names! The
only substantial argument for case sensitivity that I've heard is for
backward compatibility with programs that are too "brain-dead" to
manage without it.
Let me just point out that there are other systems out there besides the
Mac, a fact which is often glossed over when Mac developers are, say,
arguing that resource forks are justifiable in this day and age.
HFS+'s oh-so-thoughtful inability to allow "foo.c" and "foo.C" to
coexist, presents problems when trying to build a number of very useful
UNIX programs.
-jcr
"Scientology is evil; its techniques are evil; its practice is a serious
threat to the community, medically, morally, and socially; and its
adherents are sadly deluded and often mentally ill... --Justice
Anderson, Supreme Court of Victoria, Australia