Author: Christophe Theron
Date: 13:03:11 05/23/02
Go up one level in this thread
On May 23, 2002 at 11:15:14, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>On May 23, 2002 at 01:31:56, Jeremiah Penery wrote:
>
>>On May 23, 2002 at 01:16:44, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>>
>>>On May 22, 2002 at 22:08:45, Christophe Theron wrote:
>>>
>>>>Filenames are case sensitive in Windows only for storing. When searching for
>>>>filenames, the search is case insensitive. That's the best way to do it in my
>>>>opinion.
>>>
>>>
>>>Not in mine. I want WCCCxxxx to mean something significant, since WCCC is
>>>obviously an abbreviation for something. wcccxxxx should (to me) be a
>>>different file. Otherwise, _why_ would I name one WCCCxxxx and the other
>>>wcccxxxx and expect them to be the same? Why not just type them the same
>>>and it works. IE if you don't like case-sensitive filenames, simply make
>>>all your filenames lowercase and the problem is instantly solved, but
>>>leaving the rest of us the option of using case sensitivity to do whatever
>>>we want...
>>
>>He's not talking about saving a file with different case. If a filesystem can
>>do that, great. But when you're _searching_ for a file, you should be able to
>>search for "wccc..." and see a list with _both_ sets of files. That is what
>>Christophe is saying, and it makes way more sense to do it this way.
>
>
>This is already trivial to do using regular expressions. Or anybody could
>write their own "find" command that is case insensitive. I did this inside
>Crafty to match GM/IM names to adjust how crafty behaves. And I found it
>tedious to try to match strange combinations of upper and lower case letters,
>so I simply mapped them all to lowercase _first_...
>
>But in Unix, if you are looking for files or strings in files, it is trivial
>to make it case insensitive already. Just study "regular expressions"...
And here we get a good understanding of one of the problems that will keep Linux
away from mainstream (and that's a pity).
The file matching convention is user unfriendly (convince yourself by making a
poll here for example), and the proposed solution for this problem is even more
unfriendly (regular expressions, how am I going to explain that to my mother -
she just wants to do word processing and email).
That's all the Linux philosophy in a snapshot. It's just an example, but you can
repeat the same pattern for many features of the OS.
Normal people care more about useability than about features.
But not Linux users/developpers. Linux users/developpers care more about
features than about useability.
The result is a clear success: the stuff is unuseable for normal people. And
Linuxers like it: normal people are a threat to the philosophy. They might
demand stupid things, like being able to retrieve a file called "WCCCxxx" by
just typing "wccc*". Geez!
Time for new blood to kick in and reconsider some basic things... There is a
huge potential in Linux.
Christophe
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