NT and case sensitivity

[Marc Slemko <ma...@znep.com>]

Cute.  MS has defined NT, as a whole, to be case insensitive for
filenames.  However, NTFS is case sensitive and you can create files with
the same name but differing case.  Win32 apps, however, can only access
one of them. 

Re: NT and case sensitivity

[Rodent of Unusual Size <Ke...@Golux.Com>]

This whole case-sensitivity thing has been chewing my backside
for about the last fortnight, though not so specific to Win32.
As has been said before, and should come as no surprise, we're
severely limited by our having to do name abstraction at the
host-platform level rather than at the filesystem level.  Oh,
if only there were a reliable way to determine that a particular
file is on an NFS filesystem, or NTFS, or VMS, or FAT, or AFS,
or ...  Unfortunately, completely hiding the details of the
underlying location or transport seems to be a primary goal
of distributed filesystem designers.  Making things transparent
and seamless to the user is fine - but there should be A Way for
those with enquiring minds.

If anyone knows of any work done to make this sort of
determination possible I would be most appreciative to hear
about it..

#ken	P-)}

Ken Coar                    <http://Web.Golux.Com/coar/>
Apache Group member         <http://www.apache.org/>
"Apache Server for Dummies" <http://Web.Golux.Com/coar/ASFD/>

Re: NT and case sensitivity

[Marc Slemko <ma...@worldgate.com>]

On Fri, 3 Jul 1998, Alexei Kosut wrote:

> On Fri, 3 Jul 1998, Marc Slemko wrote:
> 
> > Cute.  MS has defined NT, as a whole, to be case insensitive for
> > filenames.  However, NTFS is case sensitive and you can create files with
> > the same name but differing case.  Win32 apps, however, can only access
> > one of them. 
> 
> Hmm! Actually, Windows is not alone in this problem. The MacOS and other
> OSes that have case-insensitive filenames have the same problem when using
> case-sensitive filesystems. Of which there are many (including HFS+,
> IIRC).
> 
> I mean, while NTFS is a special case, you can't expect NT to do something
> reliably correct when it expects "Foo" and "foo" to be the same thing, but
> the Unix server you're accessing with Samba thinks they're different...

No, but I can expect that a filesystem designed for NT (hence the odd
name NTFS) that is case sensitive is lame.  Well, more like NT is lame
because it isn't, but...

NT implements case sensitivity in its POSIX layer, so POSIX apps can
create files that Win32 apps can't properly access.  

Not only that, but NT pretends it is case sensitive by showing things in
mixed case.

I really have trouble seeing why it wouldn't be worth the tiny extra pain
(since you have long names to deal with anyway) to have case sensitive
filenames.  

Re: NT and case sensitivity

[Alexei Kosut <ak...@leland.Stanford.EDU>]

On Fri, 3 Jul 1998, Marc Slemko wrote:

> Cute.  MS has defined NT, as a whole, to be case insensitive for
> filenames.  However, NTFS is case sensitive and you can create files with
> the same name but differing case.  Win32 apps, however, can only access
> one of them. 

Hmm! Actually, Windows is not alone in this problem. The MacOS and other
OSes that have case-insensitive filenames have the same problem when using
case-sensitive filesystems. Of which there are many (including HFS+,
IIRC).

I mean, while NTFS is a special case, you can't expect NT to do something
reliably correct when it expects "Foo" and "foo" to be the same thing, but
the Unix server you're accessing with Samba thinks they're different...

-- Alexei Kosut <ak...@stanford.edu> <http://www.stanford.edu/~akosut/>
   Stanford University, Class of 2001 * Apache <http://www.apache.org> *