Re: linux on HFS? why not HPFS instead?
Ben Wing (wing@666.com)
Sat, 11 May 1996 03:42:30 -0700
In article <31900B2B.41C67EA6@sccm.stanford.edu> you write:
|Matthias Urlichs (urlichs@noris.de) wrote:
|[snip]
|> Unfortunately, you cannot create a case sensitive HFS file system. HFS is
|> specified to be case preserving. A Macintosh would have a severe case of
|> indigestion if you fed it with a directory in which you have created both
|> "Makefile" and "makefile".
|>
|> On a case-preserving file system, of course, your Makefile would still be
|> fount when you type M<tab>. But the only reasonably compatible way to deal
|> with this issue is to have the HFS file system return an error if you try
|> to create a makefile when Makefile exists.
|[snip]
|
| That is what the current HFS module for Linux does. You get
|EEXIST if you try to create 'makefile' when 'Makefile' exists in the same
|directory. (which is stretching the truth only slightly). The idea of an
|Extended HFS (EHFS) would involve some sort of name mangling to allow them
|to coexist, perhaps making one of them something like 'MAKEFILE00001'.
Just my (obviously very opinionated) two cents here ...
IMHO "case-insensitive but case-preserving" (VFAT does this as well) is an
incredibly broken way of doing things. I had to fix up Win-Emacs to work
on this kind of file system, and I cannot begin to tell you what a pain
in the ass it is to deal with this. (On the other hand, case-insensitive
and not case-preserving, like the standard FAT file system, is much much
easier to deal with.)
ben
--
"... then the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was
more painful than the risk it took to blossom." -- Anais Nin