Should "B" be the Same as "b"?

joshua42 asks: "Although having used Linux and FreeBSD for many years, I have yet to come across anyone seriously questioning the traditional UNIX style file system name paradigm. With an Amiga background (It should be the same for people growing up with Windows, or those growing up with no computer at all (God forbid!).) it took me quite a while to get used to 'A' and 'a' being treated as different characters. This is of course fairly easy to accept and to understand if you have a technical background. I do however have a hard time to see how aunt Ginny will ever be able to distinguish between her 'Letter.txt', 'LETTER.TXT' and 'letter.txt' files. In real life, upper and lower case letters represents almost identical information to most people. Has any thoughts been spent on this issue, now that our favorite OS is becoming increasingly mainstream? Does it need to be addressed? Have any attempts been done? What are the implications to parts outside the file systems?" This is an interesting point. As Unix grows more and more popular, the simple things we've taken for granted about the filesystem may stand in the way of general users adopting it. What ways can you think of that will mitigate this problem for new Linux users without actually affecting too much? Special shells for novice users, that can simplify much of the complexity may be the way to go, here.

Comments

Re:Apple....

[medcalf]

Actually, OS X per se is not this way. The HFS+ filesystem used by OS X is this way. Using UFS on OS X (built-in and easily used if you want to) uses a case-sensitive, rather than simply case-preserving, filesystem.)

Preserve Case but don't make it case sensitive

[topham]

The only reason why Unix is case sensitive is because it was easier, and faster to implement it as such in the early days.

It is not quite efficient to Preserve Case, and not make it case-sensitive.

I used a file system like this (HPFS) for many years and much prefer it over the case-sensitive alternatives.

It is also a security concern. If I have 2 files, which are identical except for case it is possible I could run the wrong one. Why? Point and Click interfaces barely show a difference between o and O, etc.

There is also no need for 2 files with the same name, and different case when it comes to SOURCE CODE. I have seen more than 1 program implemented like this and it is downright confusing and stupid. " No no, not "ubergeek.c", "Ubergeek.c"... etc.

Garbage. Crap. Total waste of resources.

I've been working in a database language that is case-insensitive for a number of years as well. It is damn nice to not have to worry about somebody typing something in differently than expected. It isn't a problem. And I don't have to call UPPER every time I do something!

case-sensitive is a pain in the ass.

In the meantime...

[dar]

For bash users: Add the following to the .inputrc in your home dir.

set completion-ignore-case on

Then when hitting tab to complete a filename, it will fix the case for you. i.e. typing "vi xf8" and pressing tab will get you "vi XF86Config" etc.

Linux file system is OBSOLETE

[Jouni]

... and now that I got your attention, let me specify that all other file systems as well are obsolete in the context of the USER INTERFACE.

Frankly, aunt Ginny should *never* have to deal with files and file names. She should not need to know what a file is, nor choose to "save" or "discard" her work after she has written the letter to her friend Margaret. She does not know her HD from her RAM, and all for the better. She would worry to death over having her letter spun around on a magnetic disc, it would get all jumbled up for sure!

File system is an internal, abstract and archaic database that is familiar to programmers and geeks, but a lousy way to represent data for the general user. There are few things worse than navigating a blind hierarchy of unknown folders with no contextual guide to help.

The system should remember the letter when it is written, keep tabs on when it was written, put the subject in a "recent letters" list and generally manage the internal filing transparent to the user. The storage capacity of a modern computer can last aunt Ginny for years, the real trouble is in FINDING her data, the file names alone do little good for that.

For a wonderful example of how well you could do without a filesystem, look at the operation of the Palm OS devices. Anyone could learn to use them. No files in sight! It's only recently that the clever engineers at Palm jumped off the deep end by adding a file system for the flash carts. Anyone who has ever used those knows what a nightmare managing them is.

Aunt Ginny knows fsck all about file systems. Lets keep it that way.

(Oh, and the answer in the context of user interfaces? Go for the most HUMAN representation. People are not very sensitive at all to upper/lowercase letters. We should not punish them for this.)

Jouni