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

On Mon, 28 Apr 2025 17:03:46 GMT
scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) wrote:

Bonita Montero <Bonita.Montero@gmail.com> writes:

Am 28.04.2025 um 16:24 schrieb Scott Lurndal: 

Bonita Montero <Bonita.Montero@gmail.com> writes: 

Am 28.04.2025 um 11:39 schrieb Bonita Montero:
 

Am 28.04.2025 um 11:31 schrieb Muttley@DastardlyHQ.org: 

 

Yes, Unix-APIs are really achaic. When you have a filename
written with ohne user's locale and another with a different
locale reads that he get's at most a partitially readable
filename. For Janis this seems to be flexibility, but for me
that's a problem. A file- system should have fixed charset, at
best Unicode. 

>
I did have a look at how macOS / APFS handles this:
for macOS all filenames are UTF-8. 

 
No, unix (and macOS _is_ unix) filenames are a simple stream of
bytes with no meaning or semantic associated with the bytes other
than the terminating nul character and the directory separator
character. 

>
The Wikipedia says that APFS is UTF-8 capable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_File_System 

 
So is linux.   The operating system ascribes no meaning to the bytes
stored in the filesystem directories.   They're just a stream of
bytes.
 

That's nonsense.
Every case-preserving case-insensitive file system has to understand
characters encoding, at least to a certain degree.
Apple file systems can be configured to be case-sensitive, but it's not
default and recommended for none-specialist users.

One can treat them as UTF-8, which is generally the case.   In which
case your objections about 'garbage' in a different locale are
pointless. UTF-8 fonts are universal.  The currently locale doesn't
matter.
 
Windows, on the other hand, limits the character set to those that can
be described in 16-bit units, and the "locale" matters for not only
display purposes, but also for character processing.

It's rather hard to understand what you mean by above sentence.
If you meant to say that Windows file names have to use only
characters that were present in [mostly forgotten] UTC-2 character set
then you are mistaken.
If you meant something else then please express yourself more clearly.
If it was your usual instinctive Windows bashing then don't bother.