Gil wrote: >OK. I'll try. Simplicity of specification. Simplicity of implementation.
>Filenames are strings. Different strings should refer to different files. Categorical imperative there. Seems circular. >Consistency. With Binder it's easy enough to create a load module: > CASE(M) > .... > NAME FooBar(R) >Should //STEP EXEC PGM=FOOBAR invoke that program? Why not" >How about //STEP EXEC PGM='FooBar'? Why not? How about >TSO: EXEC *(FooBar)? Binder? Im talking Unix going back 45 years, not USS. But yes, Id expect them to invoke the same program. >Would you submit or vote for an RFE that LOAD/LINK/ATTACH, BLDL, ... >be made case-insensitive? Yes. >Why not? I suspect you supplied the answer: >>So it fits the definition of "tradition": The same stupid old way we've >>always done it! >> >"Stupid" indeed. And z/OS is worse than most for inconsistency. Some >interfaces are case-sensitive; others enforce case-insensitivity. Absolutely z/OS is horrible in this regard. So? >And ethnic diversity. Should files named in Cyrillic, Greek, ... be treated >in a case-insensitive fashion? Imagine the implementation complexity >and documentation complexity. Should it be locale-sensitive? Should >Cyrillic filenames be case-insensitive in the Russia locale and Latin >filenames be case sensitive? And vice-versa in a Latin locale? Well, going back to the early days of Unix, I dont think any of this mattered, so its not a defense for the design. But why would case-sensitivity need to change across locales? >Suppose another language is newly added to the Unicode CECP. Should >characters previously considered distinct suddenly be considered equivalent >because they are upper-lower case pairs? >(Don't be Anglocentric in your answer.) Are you suggesting that there are codepoints that appear in multiple pages but map differentlyso a and O might be the upper/lowercase versions of the same character in Blezerbian? I respectfully disbelieve that. >Others have argued here that the filesystem should ignore diacritical marks. >But a Hispanophone sees "año" and "ano" as two very different nouns and >would probably not approve of using them interchangably as a filename. Those are different characters. Unicode folding is an entirely different issue, I think. >Peter Relson, among others, has written here of "invalid" names, implying >GIGO. I disagree with quiet GIGO -- a programmer should be provided at >least a warning message on use of an "invalid" construct. Sorry, dont grok this point at all! Cheers, phsiii ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
