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

On 01.05.2025 01:56, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

On Wed, 30 Apr 2025 12:38:53 -0000 (UTC), Muttley wrote:
 

Its certainly not a scheme I'd use, but I've also seen Makefile and
makefile in the same package build directory in the past.

 
The GNU “make” command, specified without a filename, looks for
“GNUmakefile”, then “Makefile”, then “makefile”. The man page
<https://manpages.debian.org/make(1)> says:
 
    We recommend Makefile because it appears prominently near the
    beginning of a directory listing, right near other important files
    such as README.
 
But is this still true for most people? I think the default sort
settings these days no longer put all-caps names at the top.

I cannot tell for "most people", but it certainly depends on the
collating order of the locale setting. For example I have a mixed
setting; my default may be something like "de_DE.UTF-8"[*] but
some details I've changed to "en_US.utf8", and some to "C.UTF-8";
the sorting order is defined by (classical) "LC_COLLATE=C.UTF-8".

Despite using the classical collating order where "Makefile" stands
out I have the habit to use (for own file organizations) a leading
underscore to have specific files visually separated in listings.

Janis

[*] Where umlauts are sorted within their base characters (Ä with
A etc.) and comparisons done case-insensitive, so that "Makefile"
is an ordinary name in between the other file names. (As you say.)