Path: csiph.com!x330-a1.tempe.blueboxinc.net!usenet.pasdenom.info!news.dougwise.org!nntpfeed.proxad.net!proxad.net!feeder2-2.proxad.net!nx02.iad01.newshosting.com!newshosting.com!69.16.185.16.MISMATCH!npeer02.iad.highwinds-media.com!news.highwinds-media.com!feed-me.highwinds-media.com!spln!extra.newsguy.com!newsp.newsguy.com!news6 From: Michael Wojcik Newsgroups: comp.lang.java.programmer Subject: Re: CLI Java Glitch Date: Fri, 24 Jun 2011 09:43:18 -0400 Organization: Micro Focus Lines: 57 Message-ID: References: <4dffe2ea$0$57121$c30e37c6@exi-reader.telstra.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: peaf801d6a4529224ccbbaf97899432b541f220c6451cc537.newsdawg.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.8.1.23) Gecko/20090812 Thunderbird/2.0.0.23 Mnenhy/0.7.5.0 In-Reply-To: Xref: x330-a1.tempe.blueboxinc.net comp.lang.java.programmer:5643 Tom Anderson wrote: > On Thu, 23 Jun 2011, Michael Wojcik wrote: > >> Tom Anderson wrote: >> >>> It would certainly have been better to say file system rather than >>> operating system, i agree. However, the file system is part of the >>> operating system. >> >> Often it isn't. Many OSes support multiple file systems. Some are >> case-sensitive, some -insensitive. > > And all are part of an operating system! There are user-mode filesystems. There are third-party filesystems. If you want to call them "part of the operating system" I can't stop you, but in that case it's a pretty vapid statement. >>> If the operating system's file system is case-insensitive when >>> dealing with file paths, then the operating system is >>> case-insensitive when dealing with file paths. I don't think my >>> phrasing is incorrect. >> >> Only true if the OS only supports filesystems of one type or the other. > > It might be case-insensitive at some times, and not at others (of for > some paths - or some parts of some paths - and not others). You could > say the same about a filesystem. It's still correct to speak of the > case-sensitivity of an operating system when dealing with file paths. Rubbish. It *might* be correct, if that case-sensitivity (or lack thereof) is imposed by the OS. It needn't be, in which case it would be incorrect. A single-application embedded device might have no OS at all, just a single vertical application that talks directly to the hardware. If such a device stores data in files - chunks of data in persistent storage, keyed by name - it could be case-sensitive or -insensitive, without that being a property of "the OS" (since there wouldn't be any OS). An application running under an OS might implement its own filesystem on top of OS files (what's sometimes called "compound files"). It could be case-sensitive or -insensitive, and the OS would have no bearing on that. An OS could defer all path resolution to plug-in user-mode filesystems, in which case it would have no influence on the case sensitivity thereof. And so on. -- Michael Wojcik Micro Focus Rhetoric & Writing, Michigan State University