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

On 09.05.2025 04:22, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

On Thu, 8 May 2025 01:57:05 -0500, BGB wrote:
 

Either way, case-insensitivity at the FS level adds complexity.

 
If you look around some other groups, you will see discussion of a recent
rant from Linus Torvalds on this very issue. Basically, he doesn’t like
case-insensitivity. And he is justified in pointing out that it leads to
more opportunities for bugs in the kernel code.

(A similar comment exists, I think from Arnold Robbins, with Awk's
IGNORECASE feature.)

The only reason we need to
have it is because it makes certain things easier for users.

Well, this may be true - and I suppose it is. But we should not give
the impression that it's a "pro" for some users and there's no "con"
[for all users] with such interfaces and system behaviors. Regularly
I'm cussing, for example, if I'm searching for phrases on interfaces
that neither support case-sensitivity nor regular expressions.

But the biggest problem is probably when interoperability comes into
play.

Janis