On Mon, Sep 15, 2025 at 05:38:14PM -0500, Rob Landley wrote: > This has always made supporting case insensitive filesystems a pain on > Linux, and Linus repeated just recently that he doesn't care: > > https://www.osnews.com/story/142205/torvalds-states-the-obvious-file-systems-should-be-case-sensitive/
Because • File names are byte strings, the only 2 special bytes are '/' and NUL • Making filesystems case sensitive implies giving some meaning to some of the bytes (ie interpret them as letters). This opens big cans of worms. Not doing so just makes things simpler (= smaller code, more robust, faster, less configuration [ what encoding ? Might not be utf-8 ]). BTW: it is NUL not NULL. NULL is a pointer value, NUL is a byte, see ascii(7). -- Alain Williams Linux/GNU Consultant - Mail systems, Web sites, Networking, Programmer, IT Lecturer. +44 (0) 787 668 0256 https://www.phcomp.co.uk/ Parliament Hill Computers. Registration Information: https://www.phcomp.co.uk/Contact.html #include <std_disclaimer.h>
