3 ms·

> "case-insensitive but case-respecting" by default file systems That is actually the best policy. Case sensitivity is unnatural and weird; we don’t think by d

> "case-insensitive but case-respecting" by default file systems That is actually the best policy. Case sensitivity is unnatural and weird; we don’t think by default of readme, Readme, and README as being 3 different things. But then, when the user chose a file’s name, it’s better if the file actually has that name, and keeps it consistently regardless of how the user interacts with the file system (hence the case-preserving). The case-preserving aspect has no effect on anything outside the kernel. For all intent and purposes, it is case insensitive for any userspace code.

SAI_Peregrinus 3y ago
I disagree. It's really weird that "I" and "i" are somehow the same character (but the former is used at the start of a sentence or when it's the entire word only), or that "מ" (U+05DE) and "ם" (U+05DD) are the same character but the latter is only used at the end of a word. They're visibly distinct! Only a minority of languages have multiple cases, most scripts are unicameral (having only one case).
- kergonath 3y ago
  I am not sure I follow. Are you advocating for doing away with capitals entirely?
  - xmcqdpt2 3y ago
    i support this. capitals are basically useless anyway!
  - SAI_Peregrinus 3y ago
    No, I'm saying that case insensitivity is almost always a bad idea, especially as a default. It's useful (sometimes) for search, but even then not always what you want. Case often carries semantic information, it's not purely syntactic.
ElectricalUnion 3y ago
> Case sensitivity is unnatural and weird; Case sensitivity is naive and simple, case-insensitive systems are complex and require Case Mappings [1] and Normalization [2] and those are ugly, unless you want a half-assed system that is case-insensitive only when you only use ASCII. [1] https://unicode-org.github.io/icu/userguide/transforms/casemappings.html https://unicode-org.github.io/icu/userguide/transforms/casem... > There are different case mappings for different locales. For instance, unlike English, the character Latin small letter ‘i’ in Turkish has an equivalent Latin capital letter ‘I’ with dot above ( \u0130 ‘İ’). > In general: > case mapping can change the number of code points and/or code units of a string, > is language-sensitive (results may differ depending on language), and > is context-sensitive (a character in the input string may map differently depending on surrounding characters). [2] https://unicode-org.github.io/icu/userguide/transforms/normalization/ https://unicode-org.github.io/icu/userguide/transforms/norma...
JadeNB 3y ago
> Case sensitivity is unnatural and weird; we don’t think by default of readme, Readme, and README as being 3 different things. I believe you don't, but I certainly do.
- kergonath 3y ago
  I believe most normal people don’t. I am pretty sure that is the case, because the default behaviour of both Windows and macOS is to consider the three as the same name, it has been that way since the beginning, and nobody seems to have any problem with that. What would be weird to most people would be if the case changed for unknown reasons, which is why both are case-preserving.

SAI_Peregrinus 3y ago

I disagree. It's really weird that "I" and "i" are somehow the same character (but the former is used at the start of a sentence or when it's the entire word only), or that "מ" (U+05DE) and "ם" (U+05DD) are the same character but the latter is only used at the end of a word. They're visibly distinct! Only a minority of languages have multiple cases, most scripts are unicameral (having only one case).

kergonath 3y ago
I am not sure I follow. Are you advocating for doing away with capitals entirely?
- xmcqdpt2 3y ago
  i support this. capitals are basically useless anyway!
- SAI_Peregrinus 3y ago
  No, I'm saying that case insensitivity is almost always a bad idea, especially as a default. It's useful (sometimes) for search, but even then not always what you want. Case often carries semantic information, it's not purely syntactic.

ElectricalUnion 3y ago

> Case sensitivity is unnatural and weird; Case sensitivity is naive and simple, case-insensitive systems are complex and require Case Mappings [1] and Normalization [2] and those are ugly, unless you want a half-assed system that is case-insensitive only when you only use ASCII. [1] https://unicode-org.github.io/icu/userguide/transforms/casemappings.html https://unicode-org.github.io/icu/userguide/transforms/casem... > There are different case mappings for different locales. For instance, unlike English, the character Latin small letter ‘i’ in Turkish has an equivalent Latin capital letter ‘I’ with dot above ( \u0130 ‘İ’). > In general: > case mapping can change the number of code points and/or code units of a string, > is language-sensitive (results may differ depending on language), and > is context-sensitive (a character in the input string may map differently depending on surrounding characters). [2] https://unicode-org.github.io/icu/userguide/transforms/normalization/ https://unicode-org.github.io/icu/userguide/transforms/norma...

JadeNB 3y ago

> Case sensitivity is unnatural and weird; we don’t think by default of readme, Readme, and README as being 3 different things. I believe you don't, but I certainly do.

kergonath 3y ago
I believe most normal people don’t. I am pretty sure that is the case, because the default behaviour of both Windows and macOS is to consider the three as the same name, it has been that way since the beginning, and nobody seems to have any problem with that. What would be weird to most people would be if the case changed for unknown reasons, which is why both are case-preserving.