Re: Rationale for aligning data on even bytes in a Unix shell file?

On 07.05.2025 23:03, David Brown wrote:

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No matter how you choose to do it, you will get it wrong sometimes.
Case-insensitive comparison has language-specific details in addition to
the character in the Unicode tables.  Should the lower-case version of
"SS" be "ss" or "ß" ?  That depends on the language and the position of
the letters.  Should the capital of "ß" be "SS" or "ẞ"?  [...]

Concerning file system's named directory entries - and I'm speaking
for German here - an "ß" is not the same as an "ss" or "sz" ligature.
An "ss" for example may either be part of an ordinary word or just a
"replacement representation" (I'm lacking the correct English term)
for the 'Sharp S'. So the letters shall not be substituted by other
letters (or letter sequences) but always taken literally. So an "SS"
shall always be "ss". Historically the only relevant problem was the
'Lower Case Sharp S' where there had been no 'Upper Case Sharp S',
but that situation has changed (not too long ago).

The main point of issues with "flattening" cases in case-insensitive
(file-)systems is still undisputed [by me] of course.

Janis

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