Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Re: tla1.2 on cygwin

[Aaron Bentley]

Tom Lord wrote:
> Oh sheesh.
>
> I happen to think that "careful use" is a complete solution to this
> problem.
>
> It really, really is just like filenames used as Java classes, header
> file names, tar file contents, etc.

It's not.  Placing category names in a global namespace means that no 
one should ever use a name that differs only in case from any other 
category name that anyone has ever used.  Which is quite difficult to 
do, especially with common terms like "test", "devel", and "hacking".

With the filenames in headers, etc, the user can intervene to solve the 
problem.

Personally, I think people who use capital letters in their filenames 
are wierdos, and I'd be happy if this was solved by requiring that all 
category/branch names are lowercase.

> If you put on blinders and try to think about this problem in
> isolation then, yeah, you can spend endless afternoons dreaming up
> application level solutions when really, a simple user-level
> _convention_ is as close to a 100% solution as you're going to find.

I don't think that's very close to a solution at all.

> The name mapping you suggest is cute but, of course, immediately falls
> apart as soon as encountered by a tool that doesn't use vu_.

Not "immediately".  The mapped names would be the same as the filesystem 
names, unless there was a conflict.

> In other news -- I really shudder to think what happens when case
> insensitive file systems meet Unicode.  Suddenly you're talking about
> embedding a fairly complex case canonicalization algorithm based on
> relatively huge data tables in every kernel and application that might
> ever need to compare a filename.  

Yeah.  Apparently win32 does support Unicode for filenames, though. 
Consider that some languages have letters that exist in only one case.

Aaron