Groups | Search | Server Info | Keyboard shortcuts | Login | Register [http] [https] [nntp] [nntps]

Groups > comp.programming > #2986

Re: .SO files

Show all headers | View raw

"Ben Bacarisse" <ben.usenet@bsb.me.uk> wrote in message
news:0.079fd0d6adb80e339f92.20130209023256GMT.87a9re2p47.fsf@bsb.me.uk...
> "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> writes:

>> What else is it being then? If it is refusing to recognise a file
>> because the capitalisation isn't quite right, then it's being
>> unnecessarily fussy.
>
> Is it just case that gets your goat?  What about accents and spaces?
> Do "Belle Époque", "belle èpoque", "Belle  Époque" and "Belle Époque"
> all name the same file?  What about "aeon" and "æon"?

That's the main issue I have with Unix-like file systems (and with
programming language identifiers, but that's another matter).

I don't use spaces inside filenames myself, and certainly wouldn't use
accents.

We shouldn't forget that a filename is a key used to identify a file which
contains the actual content. Once you allow anything in a filename, and
remove the restriction on length, then you no longer need a separate content
part! Because you can just store everything in the filename.

But that's not practical (imagine trying to locate a book by typing in the
entire contents! And it wouldn't be practical to do a literal match because
you will already have ambiguity half-way through the first sentence.)

So it make sense to impose some restrictions on an identifier to be used a
filename. Allowing letter case to be significant is a bad idea that perhaps
had origins in C or Unix, and that seems to have permeated through
everything since.

>> Fortunately systems such as Google aren't quite as fussy, otherwise
>> searching for anything could get quite frustrating!
>
> Yes, it's amazing what the clever people at Google have achieved,
> hampered as they are by having chosen to use a case-sensitive file
> system.

You mean in spite of it?

It's easy enough to program case-insensitivity when you want to. The Windows 
file systems, for example. In the case of Google, their indexing systems 
must already be complex enough without having to treat all 2^N combinations 
of an N-character index word separately!

-- 
bartc 

Back to comp.programming | Previous | Next — Previous in thread | Next in thread | Find similar | Unroll thread

Thread

.SO files bob <bob@coolfone.comze.com> - 2013-01-22 07:00 -0800
  Re: .SO files Ben Bacarisse <ben.usenet@bsb.me.uk> - 2013-01-22 15:26 +0000
  Re: .SO files "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> - 2013-01-22 16:37 +0100
  Re: .SO files "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2013-01-22 17:42 +0000
    Re: .SO files Noob <root@127.0.0.1> - 2013-02-08 10:41 +0100
      Re: .SO files Robert Wessel <robertwessel2@yahoo.com> - 2013-02-08 04:13 -0600
      Re: .SO files "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> - 2013-02-08 12:09 +0100
      Re: .SO files "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2013-02-08 18:13 +0000
        Re: .SO files Ben Bacarisse <ben.usenet@bsb.me.uk> - 2013-02-08 21:20 +0000
          Re: .SO files "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2013-02-08 23:30 +0000
            Re: .SO files Ben Bacarisse <ben.usenet@bsb.me.uk> - 2013-02-09 02:32 +0000
              Re: .SO files "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> - 2013-02-09 09:27 +0100
                Re: .SO files "Chris Uppal" <chris.uppal@metagnostic.REMOVE-THIS.org> - 2013-02-09 10:09 +0000
                Re: .SO files Ben Bacarisse <ben.usenet@bsb.me.uk> - 2013-02-09 12:11 +0000
                Re: .SO files "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> - 2013-02-09 14:15 +0100
                Re: .SO files "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2013-02-09 14:56 +0000
                Re: .SO files clarcky297@gmail.com - 2013-02-13 07:30 -0800
              Re: .SO files "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2013-02-09 14:48 +0000
  Re: .SO files BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2013-01-22 15:19 -0600
  Re: .SO files Ian Collins <ian-news@hotmail.com> - 2013-01-23 10:25 +1300

csiph-web