5 ms·

Case insensitivity is a braindead behavior. If desired it should be a fallback path selecting the best match, not the first resort.

laurent92 5y ago
So you’re fine with ~/Downloads and ~/downloads coexisting as entirely separate directories? And John.McCauley@yahoo.fr and john.mccauley@yahoo.fr being attributed to two different people ;)
- justaguy37 5y ago
  can we just say no to capital letters? (or lowercase?) do capital letters have a good enough usage case to justify their continued existence?
  - colejohnson66 5y ago
    You are free to stop using capital letters, but good luck getting everyone to go along. Capitals have been around for centuries (they’re older than the printing press) and aren’t going anywhere.
    - bmn__ 5y ago
      The lower-case letters in Greek/Latin/Cyrillic are the new additions, initially we only had what is now called upper-case.
  - Lammy 5y ago
    Fun fact: The Apple Ⅱ and Ⅱ+ originally only did upper-case, and it was very popular to add a Shift Key / lower-case mod via one of the gamepad buttons: https://web.archive.org/web/20010212094858/http://home.swbell.net/rubywand/Csa2KBPADJS.html#001 https://web.archive.org/web/20010212094858/http://home.swbel...
- vgel 5y ago
  First one: yes, though good UI should prevent it from happening unless the user really intended it (for example I have ~/Documents symlinked into Dropbox, so ~/documents could be local-only documents) Second one: no, emails are not filenames, and more generally distinguishability is more important for identifiers. In cases where identifiers like emails need to be mapped to filenames, like caches, they should be normalized.
- im3w1l 5y ago
  > So you’re fine with ~/Downloads and ~/downloads coexisting as entirely separate directories? Case (in)sensitivity for filenames is a non-issue in my experience. Never had problems with either convention. As for emails, I do think insensitivity was the right choice.
  - tim-- 5y ago
    The RFC states that email addresses are case sensitive. The local-part of a mailbox MUST BE treated as case sensitive. Section 2.4 RFC 2821, https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2821.txt https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2821.txt
    - deadbunny 5y ago
      My guess would be that the local part of an email address would usually map to a directory on case sensitive filesystems...
    - im3w1l 5y ago
      Ah interesting. I guess the case insensitivity (for incoming email) is a decision of the popular services then, like gmails decision to consider johndoe equivalent to john.doe.
jodrellblank 5y ago
The opposite; case insensitivity is what human brains do, we read word WORD Word and woRD as the same thing, it's computer case-sensitive matching which is "brainless". Computers not aligning with what humans do is annoying and frustrating; they should be tools for us, not us for them. There's no way two people would write ö ö and have readers think they were different because one was written in oil-based ink and one in water-based ink, or whatever compares with behind the scenes implementation details like combining form vs single character. I have just been arguing the same thing in far too much detail in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29722019 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29722019
- skymt 5y ago
  There are a couple arguments against case-insensitive filesystems I think are strong. The first is simply compatibility with existing case-sensitive systems. The second is that case is locale-dependent, so a pair of names could be equivalent or not depending on the device's locale. I don't think I've seen any good argument against normalization, though.
- rob_c 5y ago
  WORD, Word WoRD.... Sorry to say I tend to use case sensitivity as a filter for me offering support to other developers. I'm not willing to find time for people who can't get their head around "turn on/off caps lock". You don't do it in professional writeups or applications (and I hope not in a CV) so don't pollute my filesystems or codebases with that madness.
  - jodrellblank 5y ago
    I’m not talking about caps lock. I can get my head around case sensitivity, I can use it, it’s worse, I don’t want to have to use it anymore than I want to use filesystem permissions in octal even though I can. Having tools take chmod u+r is easier and doesn’t change the filesystem at all.
    - rob_c 5y ago

laurent92 5y ago

So you’re fine with ~/Downloads and ~/downloads coexisting as entirely separate directories? And John.McCauley@yahoo.fr and john.mccauley@yahoo.fr being attributed to two different people ;)

justaguy37 5y ago
can we just say no to capital letters? (or lowercase?) do capital letters have a good enough usage case to justify their continued existence?
- colejohnson66 5y ago
  You are free to stop using capital letters, but good luck getting everyone to go along. Capitals have been around for centuries (they’re older than the printing press) and aren’t going anywhere.
  - bmn__ 5y ago
    The lower-case letters in Greek/Latin/Cyrillic are the new additions, initially we only had what is now called upper-case.
- Lammy 5y ago
  Fun fact: The Apple Ⅱ and Ⅱ+ originally only did upper-case, and it was very popular to add a Shift Key / lower-case mod via one of the gamepad buttons: https://web.archive.org/web/20010212094858/http://home.swbell.net/rubywand/Csa2KBPADJS.html#001 https://web.archive.org/web/20010212094858/http://home.swbel...
vgel 5y ago
First one: yes, though good UI should prevent it from happening unless the user really intended it (for example I have ~/Documents symlinked into Dropbox, so ~/documents could be local-only documents) Second one: no, emails are not filenames, and more generally distinguishability is more important for identifiers. In cases where identifiers like emails need to be mapped to filenames, like caches, they should be normalized.
im3w1l 5y ago
> So you’re fine with ~/Downloads and ~/downloads coexisting as entirely separate directories? Case (in)sensitivity for filenames is a non-issue in my experience. Never had problems with either convention. As for emails, I do think insensitivity was the right choice.
- tim-- 5y ago
  The RFC states that email addresses are case sensitive. The local-part of a mailbox MUST BE treated as case sensitive. Section 2.4 RFC 2821, https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2821.txt https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2821.txt
  - deadbunny 5y ago
    My guess would be that the local part of an email address would usually map to a directory on case sensitive filesystems...
  - im3w1l 5y ago
    Ah interesting. I guess the case insensitivity (for incoming email) is a decision of the popular services then, like gmails decision to consider johndoe equivalent to john.doe.

jodrellblank 5y ago

The opposite; case insensitivity is what human brains do, we read word WORD Word and woRD as the same thing, it's computer case-sensitive matching which is "brainless". Computers not aligning with what humans do is annoying and frustrating; they should be tools for us, not us for them. There's no way two people would write ö ö and have readers think they were different because one was written in oil-based ink and one in water-based ink, or whatever compares with behind the scenes implementation details like combining form vs single character. I have just been arguing the same thing in far too much detail in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29722019 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29722019

skymt 5y ago
There are a couple arguments against case-insensitive filesystems I think are strong. The first is simply compatibility with existing case-sensitive systems. The second is that case is locale-dependent, so a pair of names could be equivalent or not depending on the device's locale. I don't think I've seen any good argument against normalization, though.
rob_c 5y ago
WORD, Word WoRD.... Sorry to say I tend to use case sensitivity as a filter for me offering support to other developers. I'm not willing to find time for people who can't get their head around "turn on/off caps lock". You don't do it in professional writeups or applications (and I hope not in a CV) so don't pollute my filesystems or codebases with that madness.
- jodrellblank 5y ago
  I’m not talking about caps lock. I can get my head around case sensitivity, I can use it, it’s worse, I don’t want to have to use it anymore than I want to use filesystem permissions in octal even though I can. Having tools take chmod u+r is easier and doesn’t change the filesystem at all.
  - rob_c 5y ago