Message-Id: <m0wX9ti-0003omC@mail.oeonline.com>
From: "Steven Ehrbar" <ehrbar AT oeonline DOT com>
To: "Mike A. Harris" <mharris AT blackwidow DOT saultc DOT on DOT ca>
Cc: <opendos AT delorie DOT com>
Subject: Re: cAsE sensitivity
Date: Thu, 29 May 1997 14:27:14 -0400
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Precedence: bulk

> > This might sound silly, but why not set up the system so that it first
> > checks for the filename in the case you typed it, and if that fails
goes to
> > the first name in that directory FAT that matches case-insensitively?
<snip>
> The old version in \ASDF is deleted.  I then forget all about the
> whole thing and use the new asdf for a couple weeks.  One day, I
> decide to clean up my hard drive because I'm running out of space
> so I go looking for things to delete.  Then it occurs to me that
> I had an old copy of asdf laying around in the \ASDF directory.
> Did I delete it allready?  Hmmm, I'm not sure so I'll just delete
> it again and be sure:
> 
> DELTREE \ASDF
> 
> The heuristics engine can't find \ASDF so it looks for other
> filenames with the same letters in different case, then it
> deltrees \asdf and I no longer have my asdf program.
> 
> No thanks.

So you throw a confirm into the delete and deltree commands that warns you
when you're violating case and gives you the option to back out, similar to
the "del *.*" confirms.  So then the user sophisticated enough to properly
use case-sensitive file names runs a "dir" to see what's going on, and the
others suffer the same fate as unsophisticated "del *.*" users.

> > And, of course, make the whole thing (whether you want total case
> > insensitivity, simple case retention prohibiting case-differntiated
files,
> > or full case sensitivity which allows case-differentiated files) an
OPTION
> > in the config.sys file -- maybe even a per-filesystem or even a
> > per-partition option.
> 
> As it stands with operating systems we currently have enough
> problems to worry about rather than implementing a bunch of new
> convoluted systems.

> 1) Case insensitive:  DOS/VMS
> 2) Case insensitive stored case:  VFAT/NTFS/HPFS
> 3) Case sensitive: ext2/minix/other unix FS's

At the time I wrote that (literally /weeks/ ago!) nobody (at least on the
non-developer list) was talking about limiting case sensitivity to non-FAT
file systems.  Accordingly, my config.sys proposal was primarily dealing
with a modified FAT system, and was modeled after the options in the
config.sys for OS/2 for ext2fsOS/2.  

And people who edit a config.sys file without knowing what they're doing
deserve trouble, while people who do know there might be filename conflicts
when they switch from sensitive to an insensitive option and will be
prepared to deal with it.