>From my pov file names shouldn't be seen or treated as "language". It may use text/words from a language as a convenience and to make the life easier for users and developers but the point of it is identification, not adherence to language as such. If we don't see it in this way we are on a path towards endless problems.
And here in the thread we can see the problems that will arise. As it is, due to historical reasons, we have implemented english as the source of the used character set, with obvious limitations. And KISS. (Keep It Simple Stupid.) Use at most upper case and lower case letters and some useful special characters in file names and code. That is A-Z, a-z, 0-9, maybe so called "national characters" and some specials. Any other needs, e g other languages or more descriptive needs or adherence to "correct language" have to be kept in some "meta data" files/file parts. And I don't know why the original authors in the unix community saw it as useful to make a distinction between file names based on the usage of case but it will inevitable cause problems due to confusion (as everything that looks like part of your language will cause you (=your brain) to treat it as such). If the file name is "Hereisanexample" you will often be confused if there is another file with the name "HereisanExample". Take that times 10000 and you have a lot of time wasted. As I see it, the best solution is have all these file names point to the same file: Hereisanexample HereisanExample hereisanexample etc And if you need to use the "key span" of using all characters for a file name, like password like formats, hashes, and system uses - have a convention for it in the file system like (as in a known usage) having a special character as the first like ".something". But I would prefer a char that is more seldom used in a natural language. About the other needs as I mentioned above and "meta data" it needs to be somewhat universal like char set id's. Anyway in practice we will never get chars like éĕưüşîâ play well in neither programming or file systems. Especially when there are users with different languages and systems. Thomas Berg "I wash off the hatred of my enemies and the greed and wrath of powerful people." “I clearly saw the skeleton underneath all this show of personality. What is left of a man and all his pride but bones?” Den lör 25 okt. 2025 17:[email protected] <[email protected]> skrev: > * > When choosing case insensitivity designers must carefully > * > consider what its scope should be. > * > > > This is a key point. File names are often mentioned in text (books, email, > newsgroups, etc). Sometimes the file name is copied (maybe cut & paste) > from code examples, and sometimes it is simply typed by the author. Should > text processors "recognize" that the text is a file name and automatically > convert it to upper case? Or convert it to lower case to look better in the > middle of a paragraph? > > There is another part to text cases: terminal keyboards, and not all of > these are "standard" English. And, of course, some languages are > "right-to-left" instead of the "left-to-right" that most of us are > accustomed to use. Should text processors somehow recognize when a file > name is being discussed and provide special handling? Sometimes a > particular case is important for recognition (DeLorenko vs DELORENKO or > delorenko could make a customer unhappy!) As mentioned already, automatic > case changes are not clearly defined in some languages. > > "Text processor" can mean anything from ISPF edit to an expensive > "professional" author's tool. (I use both; many of us use a wide range of > these tools.) > > While it was less true in "7 bit ASCII days" we should remember that the > computer world is a world-wide concept today. I can grasp how "upper case" > happened in keypunch days (no lower case) and "7 bit" days but, IMHO, it is > unfortunate that z/OS has stuck with some upper case restrictions. (Of > course, changing this now might cause nightmares in some production > operations!) > > Bill Ogden > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, > send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
