Re: [h-e-w] Re: Case-sensitivity of filenames under NT, in VC

[Eli Zaretskii]

On Wed, 12 Jun 2002, Dr Francis J. Wright wrote:

> > I believe Emacs should treat file names as the underlying filesystem
> > does.
> 
> I thought it did, unless w32-downcase-file-names is set; by default it is
> unset.

That might be so in the case in point, but please note that nothing 
prevents Lisp code from comparing file names as strings, including the 
letter case.  Such code will have subtle bugs on Windows.

> > > What is the rationale for that?
> >
> > Evidently, some Windows tools (the ftp client, in this case) have a
> > misfeature whereby they change the letter-case of the file names when
> > they copy the files.
> 
> Most standard Windows programs ignore case in file names, but the MS ftp
> client doesn't change case.

Not only the ftp client: most Windows programs preserve letter case in 
file names.  But some don't, and that's why support for 
case-insensitivity is required to avoid surprises on the user side.

> MS applications usually ignore case; ports
> from UNIX usually respect case.

IMHO, ports from Unix which don't ignore letter case in file-name 
comparisons are subtly broken.

> I haven't done this recently, but IIRC if you mount a UNIX filesystem using
> Samba then it depends on the application whether or not it respects filename
> case, just as for a local filesystem.

I'm quite sure that if you try to be case-sensitive in this case, you 
will see lots of weird problems.  Windows is simply not ready for such a 
feat.

> > Too many things on Windows depend
> > on case-insensitivity.
> 
> I agree.  But presumably applications will always be able to ignore filename
> case if they want.

If applications ignore letter case, you cannot say that the system is 
case-sensitive.