Re: Case Insensitive File Systems -- Torvalds Hates Them

Rich <rich@example.invalid> writes:

Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:

I wouldn't be surprised that they never gave the matter much thought,
outside of disallowing NULs and slashes.  That's where your "effectively"
comes in above. They probably assumed that nobody in his right mind would
use newlines unless he knew what he was doing, had a good reason for it,
and was ready to take responsibility for his actions.

>
That's my belief, but not having been there, and having no way to ask
them, that's all it is.  But most likely reason is simply they did not
consider limiting the characters that could be used in any way.

https://dsf.berkeley.edu/cs262/unix.pdf provides no real hints. The
nearest is s3.1:

    A file contains whatever information the user places on it, for
    example symbolic or binary (object) programs. No particular
    structuring is expected by the system. Files of text consist simply
    of a string of characters, with lines demarcated by the new-line
    character. Binary programs are sequences of words as they will
    appear in core memory when the program starts executing. A few user
    programs manipulate files with more structure: the assembler gener-
    ates and the loader expects an object file in a particular for-
    mat. However, the structure of files is controlled by the programs
    which use them, not by the system.

but that’s really about file contents, and not about names (or at least
not explicitly about names).

But given the general sense of “we provide mechanism, not policy” it’s
plausible they’d have said the same applies to names, if asked.

--
https://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/