From:	randall AT alum DOT mit DOT edu (Randall)
Subject:	Another vote on the case-sensitivity issue
10 Mar 1998 22:21:08 -0800 :
Message-ID:	<199803102354.PAA00659.cygnus.gnu-win32@whitman.net>
Reply-To:	Randall <hezekiah AT rahul DOT net>
To:	gnu-win32 AT cygnus DOT com

I see that there has been some traffic on this gnu-win32 list over the
issue of case-sensitivity in the GnuWin32 utilities.  As this seems to
still be an open issue, let me put in my vote.

For practical use of the GnuWin32 utilities, i need an option to tell
them to consider filenames case-insensitive when handling wildcards.
This is because many of my files are created by 16-bit programs that
insist on storing NAME.EXT instead of name.ext; whereas conceptually I
consider the name to be "name.ext" in either case.  Actually, an environment
variable would be better than a flag, so I wouldn't have to remember/type
that flag every invocation.  I recommend giving users both options.

One note to this list said that 'ls *.[Tt][Xx][Tt]' should be sufficient,
just like in UNIX.  No, that is not acceptable in terms of ease-of-use
considerations; if I have to do that i will likely stick with the old
8.3-limited 16-bit ls.exe.  It is NOT just like UNIX for this reason:
in UNIX no program ever gives me FILE.TXT when I run 'program file.txt';
whereas DOS apps do that to me all the time.  This is a crucial difference.

I saw the note on the FAQ web page about special globbing of e.g. "ls *.exe"
when running under command.com [in "How does wildcarding (globbing) work?"].
Is this a change from b18 to b19?  I don't see this behavior in b18
when running under command.com.  In any case, my comments above are
equally applicable when I am running under tcsh.exe as when I am
running under command.com.

Specifically, I am using the b18 version of the Cygnus GnuWin32 utilities under
Dos-7.10/Win95-4.00.1111 on i586-166 when doing a task for which I need
Dos/Win rather than Linux.
=randall  <hezekiah AT may98 DOT rahul DOT net>


Btw, for those of you fortunate enough to have perl for Win32 installed (I
gotta do that one of these days!), you might have use for an adaptation of
the following perl script:

#!/usr/local/bin/perl -w
## tolower.pl:  Convert listed filenames to lowercase
## Copyright 1997-1998  Randall Whitman
## May be copied under terms of the GNU General Public License

mkdir Tmp,777 or die "Tmp already exists.";
chmod 0700, Tmp;

foreach $file (@ARGV)
{
    print $file, "\t", lc($file), "\n";
    system "mv $file Tmp";
    $outfile = lc($file);
    system "cp -p Tmp/$file $outfile";
}

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