Re: The case insensitive #include statement horror...

From:
"William DePalo [MVP VC++]" <willd.no.spam@mvps.org>
Newsgroups:
microsoft.public.vc.language
Date:
Thu, 30 Nov 2006 17:04:09 -0500
Message-ID:
<un0b3tMFHHA.3616@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl>
"Stephan Kuhagen" <nospam@domain.tld> wrote in message
news:ekn6iv$pgg$1@kohl.informatik.uni-bremen.de...

What I want is not Windows to behave like Unix alikes, instead I want the
programmers follows the programming style guide rules. If you develop
cross
platform, you come much faster to a stable state of the source, if
programmers do think about what they write carefully. "Works for me" is
not
a good argument for good code - okay following a style guide isn't
neither,
if the SG isn't good. But ours is, I think.


OK, that's completely different and reasonable. It's just not reasonable to
expect the platform or the toolset to help you here. It is after all the
difference between the platforms that makes portability an issue.

I don't believe that, but it would be interesting to know the real reason.


Yes, it would.

I suspect, that it has something to do with data consistency. Ignoring
case
in filenames leads to unnoticed change of data, which is one thing, most
users and system operators won't like very much.


How is that? Win32's file system is the counter example, no?

As far as I can remember,
old Unix filesystems worked such, that directories were files itself.
These
special (but normal text-)files just contained the names of the files,
which were in that directory. You were able to edit this file by hand to
move file around or rename them. Since text in a text file definitely must
be case sensitive (I think, we can agree on that?), the filenames in old
Unix filesystems must also be case sensitive. I don't know, if that is the
whole story, but I think, it explains pretty much.


If that's so, 'nix is even clunkier and more antiquated than I thought.

FWIW: this is interesting reading:

http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/_/fileCaseSens.html

Regards,
Will

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