Re: [fpc-pascal] FPC with case insensitive file system under Linux
Am 28.02.2012 08:38, schrieb Noah Silva: Windows supports multiple locales and has 95% of the computer market - Not really: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems Anyway, if we did everything the way Microsoft suggested, we would give up real sym links and litter the filesystem with .lnk files, too. Modern versions of NTFS support symlinks, too. Also there were reasons why Microsoft decided to use .lnk files: http://technet.microsoft.com/de-de/magazine/2006.09.windowsconfidential%28en-us%29.aspx Regards, Sven ___ fpc-pascal maillist - fpc-pascal@lists.freepascal.org http://lists.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/fpc-pascal
Re: [fpc-pascal] FPC with case insensitive file system under Linux
Hi Sven, From what I've read, the NT kernel (and filesystem) support a lot of things that Windows in general doesn't. Presumably this is because it is (unofficially, of course) loosely based on VMS, but Win32 was originally designed to work with DOS, etc. Thank you, Noah Silva 2012/2/28 Sven Barth pascaldra...@googlemail.com Am 28.02.2012 08:38, schrieb Noah Silva: Windows supports multiple locales and has 95% of the computer market - Not really: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/**Usage_share_of_operating_** systems http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems Anyway, if we did everything the way Microsoft suggested, we would give up real sym links and litter the filesystem with .lnk files, too. Modern versions of NTFS support symlinks, too. Also there were reasons why Microsoft decided to use .lnk files: http://technet.microsoft.com/** de-de/magazine/2006.09.**windowsconfidential%28en-us%**29.aspxhttp://technet.microsoft.com/de-de/magazine/2006.09.windowsconfidential%28en-us%29.aspx Regards, Sven __**_ fpc-pascal maillist - fpc-pascal@lists.freepascal.**orgfpc-pascal@lists.freepascal.org http://lists.freepascal.org/**mailman/listinfo/fpc-pascalhttp://lists.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/fpc-pascal ___ fpc-pascal maillist - fpc-pascal@lists.freepascal.org http://lists.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/fpc-pascal
Re: [fpc-pascal] FPC with case insensitive file system under Linux
Am 28.02.2012 09:47, schrieb Noah Silva: Hi Sven, From what I've read, the NT kernel (and filesystem) support a lot of things that Windows in general doesn't. Presumably this is because it is (unofficially, of course) loosely based on VMS, but Win32 was originally designed to work with DOS, etc. Yes, the NT kernel is definitely much more powerful than the Win32 subsystem. For example it has a single rooted object based file system where other file systems are automatically mounted and you can access them through e.g. \Devices\Harddisk0\HarddiskVolume1. Also it supports symbolic links in there (the Win32 subsystem uses them internally very much). One can explore all those things for example with my Native NT port of Free Pascal ;) The symlink feature I talked about can be used in Vista and newer from within the Win32 subsystem as well though. Regards, Sven ___ fpc-pascal maillist - fpc-pascal@lists.freepascal.org http://lists.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/fpc-pascal
Re: [fpc-pascal] FPC with case insensitive file system under Linux
Hi Sven, It seems that since NT is the only remaining Windows kernel now that it might make sense to use NT functions in (for example) the normal SysUtils library for more efficient implementations - do you think there is any strong reason not to? You have to figure there are two layers of thunking going on now: 1. System/SysUtils - Win32 2. Win32 - NT. Does .NET, etc. Actually use the Win32 APIs or NT APIs? (The runtime, obviously the programs use the .NET API...) Thank you, Noah Silva 2012/2/28 Sven Barth pascaldra...@googlemail.com Am 28.02.2012 09:47, schrieb Noah Silva: Hi Sven, From what I've read, the NT kernel (and filesystem) support a lot of things that Windows in general doesn't. Presumably this is because it is (unofficially, of course) loosely based on VMS, but Win32 was originally designed to work with DOS, etc. Yes, the NT kernel is definitely much more powerful than the Win32 subsystem. For example it has a single rooted object based file system where other file systems are automatically mounted and you can access them through e.g. \Devices\Harddisk0\**HarddiskVolume1. Also it supports symbolic links in there (the Win32 subsystem uses them internally very much). One can explore all those things for example with my Native NT port of Free Pascal ;) The symlink feature I talked about can be used in Vista and newer from within the Win32 subsystem as well though. Regards, Sven __**_ fpc-pascal maillist - fpc-pascal@lists.freepascal.**orgfpc-pascal@lists.freepascal.org http://lists.freepascal.org/**mailman/listinfo/fpc-pascalhttp://lists.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/fpc-pascal ___ fpc-pascal maillist - fpc-pascal@lists.freepascal.org http://lists.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/fpc-pascal
Re: [fpc-pascal] FPC with case insensitive file system under Linux
Am 28.02.2012 10:03, schrieb Noah Silva: Hi Sven, It seems that since NT is the only remaining Windows kernel now that it might make sense to use NT functions in (for example) the normal SysUtils library for more efficient implementations - do you think there is any strong reason not to? You have to figure there are two layers of thunking going on now: 1. System/SysUtils - Win32 2. Win32 - NT. The NT API is not documented and I don't think it's worth the hazzle (working with an undocumented API) to improve performance a little bit. The Win32 API is THE API if you target Windows, so we shouldn't play with that. Also it might be that programs that check whether applications can be Windows certified will check whether the application accesses the native API and I don't want to tell a company that wants to certificate an application written in FPC that they can't do it... Does .NET, etc. Actually use the Win32 APIs or NT APIs? (The runtime, obviously the programs use the .NET API...) .NET is based on top of Win32 so it uses only the Win32 API. The only people that officially use the Native API are driver, kernel and subsystem developers at Microsoft (and ReactOS). Regards, Sven ___ fpc-pascal maillist - fpc-pascal@lists.freepascal.org http://lists.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/fpc-pascal
Re: [fpc-pascal] FPC with case insensitive file system under Linux
Hi, 2012/2/25 Graeme Geldenhuys graemeg.li...@gmail.com On 24 February 2012 16:13, Henry Vermaak wrote: Because case sensitive systems don't create as much confusion Then lets look at it from an average user's point of view. Must they really be confronted with multiple files in a single folder named: test.txt Test.txt Test.Txt TEST.TXT test.TXT All the user wants to do, is open a test dot t x t file. Under Linux they could be confronted with multiple versions? Very confusing. I like to CamelCase my file names - it makes them easier to read in a file listing. But when I reference them in say a search dialog, I'll probably type them in all lowercase for speed reason. I would still like Linux to find that file though - but it wouldn't. However, most users just click on the file. And most users who would type the filename know enough to type the proper case. (And the GUI file selector could search-as-you-type, in a case sensitive or insensitive way). As I, and it seems many others on the Internet, have found - there really isn't a good reason why Linux must still use case sensitive file systems. Probably the main reason is because C does. Also, while users don't care, tech people tend to prefer definite accuracy over possible ease. However, while I am strongly for case insensitivity in programming languages (It's too easy to have different cases in different parts of the code), I don't think many people would have a huge preference in file systems. Unlike C, where many programmers make use of the case sensitivity, I don't see otherwise duplicate files often in Linux (someone correct me if you have a good example). Yet very few have complained (in a valid way) about the way Linux does it, so it's unlikely to change any time soon. Also, as mentioned before, to do things *properly* for case insensitivity with non-ASCII would require a very large amounts of code. This is the same reason why SQLite doesn't even try. Windows supports multiple locales and has 95% of the computer market - Not really: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems Anyway, if we did everything the way Microsoft suggested, we would give up real sym links and litter the filesystem with .lnk files, too. it doesn't have case sensitive file systems. Mac OS X by default doesn't either (though they are nice enough to give you the choice). I think Linux should give you the choice too. Linux does give you the choice, in a sense. You can format many of the filesystems as case insensitive, and I am fairly sure Linux will still boot fine. I use the case sensitive option on Mac OS X, btw. Anyway, hopefully my newly formatted JFS partitions will sort this out. At the end of the day, a computer thinks that a is 97 and A is 65, but what humans perceive is more complicated. And a computer should serve a human, not the other way round. Read the excellent book About Face 3. Perhaps, but that that means is up to interpretation. I interpret is as do what I say and don't second-guess me. If you really want to give the user what they want, then you have to let them use any file names and identifier names they want, with any characters, and do full Unicode case collapsing and normalization. At any rate, this is probably not the domain to deal with in FPC, all we can do is support the OS policy. more info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filename#Case:_upper.2C_lower.2C_preservation As any rate, to bring this back to a Pascal related discussion: 1. FPC works with case sensitive and case insensitive filesystems quite well. 2. FPC tries to mangle the case to come common cases in order to handle legacy code on ___ fpc-pascal maillist - fpc-pascal@lists.freepascal.org http://lists.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/fpc-pascal
Re: [fpc-pascal] FPC with case insensitive file system under Linux
On 24 February 2012 16:13, Henry Vermaak wrote: Because case sensitive systems don't create as much confusion. Here my thoughts are the opposite. While backing up my data no an external drive with is case insensitive I came across a lot of possible issues I never realised I had on my case sensitive Linux file system. eg: In one source code directory I had files as follows: tiDefines.inc tidefines.inc Backing this up to a case insensitive file system, I program prompted me that the origin file was going to be replaced? So, looking at those files on my Linux (case sensitive) file system, which one is actually the latest version? To find out, I had to fire up Beyond Compare and to a content comparison. This actually happened quite a few times with many of my source code. This all probably got introduced when I moved source code over from Windows to Linux some 6 years ago. Confusing now? Definitely! Did Linux warn me, nope. Does the compiler know which one to actually use - no idea. How does Lazarus know which one to open (because Lazarus searches for multiple case files) - no idea? Then lets look at it from an average user's point of view. Must they really be confronted with multiple files in a single folder named: test.txt Test.txt Test.Txt TEST.TXT test.TXT All the user wants to do, is open a test dot t x t file. Under Linux they could be confronted with multiple versions? Very confusing. I like to CamelCase my file names - it makes them easier to read in a file listing. But when I reference them in say a search dialog, I'll probably type them in all lowercase for speed reason. I would still like Linux to find that file though - but it wouldn't. As I, and it seems many others on the Internet, have found - there really isn't a good reason why Linux must still use case sensitive file systems. Windows supports multiple locales and has 95% of the computer market - it doesn't have case sensitive file systems. Mac OS X by default doesn't either (though they are nice enough to give you the choice). I think Linux should give you the choice too. Anyway, hopefully my newly formatted JFS partitions will sort this out. At the end of the day, a computer thinks that a is 97 and A is 65, but what humans perceive is more complicated. And a computer should serve a human, not the other way round. Read the excellent book About Face 3. -- Regards, - Graeme - ___ fpGUI - a cross-platform Free Pascal GUI toolkit http://fpgui.sourceforge.net ___ fpc-pascal maillist - fpc-pascal@lists.freepascal.org http://lists.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/fpc-pascal
Re: [fpc-pascal] FPC with case insensitive file system under Linux
On 24 February 2012 15:57, Mattias Gaertner wrote: The whole last week I cursed the opposite direction (first windows, then OS X). It seems it depends on the current task. :-) Linux can handle both. But many Linux tools only support case sensitive files. Well, in a case insensitive file system, there will only be one copy of a specific file name in a directory. So the Linux tools should get confused with which one to open or use. So I don't really think it is going to be a problem. I guess I'll find out in the coming week. :-) My recommendation: If you have the choice, use the OS defaults. Many programs will fail otherwise. In the case of Linux, there is no default. Linux is just the kernel. The Linux distro's on the other hand all make different choices. Some distros choose ReiserFS, others Ext3, others Ext4, others JFS, some are now experimenting with Btrfs etc. Anyway, our company has done extensive testing (a couple years ago) with performance and failure recovery of various file systems for Linux, and JFS has come up tops. I personally have standardised on JFS for many years. Only now am I deciding to switch to the case insensitive option though. Luckily I have a choice under Linux. Anyway, I just wanted to know if anybody knew of any blatant issues with FPC or Lazarus on a case insensitive file system, but I guess with Windows and Mac OS X being around, it is safe to assume everything will continue to work as normal. -- Regards, - Graeme - ___ fpGUI - a cross-platform Free Pascal GUI toolkit http://fpgui.sourceforge.net ___ fpc-pascal maillist - fpc-pascal@lists.freepascal.org http://lists.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/fpc-pascal
Re: [fpc-pascal] FPC with case insensitive file system under Linux
Graeme Geldenhuys schrieb: On 24 February 2012 16:13, Henry Vermaak wrote: Because case sensitive systems don't create as much confusion. Here my thoughts are the opposite. While backing up my data no an external drive with is case insensitive I came across a lot of possible issues I never realised I had on my case sensitive Linux file system. eg: In one source code directory I had files as follows: tiDefines.inc tidefines.inc Backing this up to a case insensitive file system, I program prompted me that the origin file was going to be replaced? So, looking at those files on my Linux (case sensitive) file system, which one is actually the latest version? To find out, I had to fire up Beyond Compare and to a content comparison. This actually happened quite a few times with many of my source code. This all probably got introduced when I moved source code over from Windows to Linux some 6 years ago. Confusing now? Definitely! Did Linux warn me, nope. Does the compiler know which one to actually use - no idea. How does Lazarus know which one to open (because Lazarus searches for multiple case files) - no idea? Then lets look at it from an average user's point of view. Must they really be confronted with multiple files in a single folder named: test.txt Test.txt Test.Txt TEST.TXT test.TXT All the user wants to do, is open a test dot t x t file. Under Linux they could be confronted with multiple versions? Very confusing. I like to CamelCase my file names - it makes them easier to read in a file listing. But when I reference them in say a search dialog, I'll probably type them in all lowercase for speed reason. I would still like Linux to find that file though - but it wouldn't. As I, and it seems many others on the Internet, have found - there really isn't a good reason why Linux must still use case sensitive file systems. Windows supports multiple locales and has 95% of the computer market - it doesn't have case sensitive file systems. Mac OS X by default doesn't either (though they are nice enough to give you the choice). I think Linux should give you the choice too. Anyway, hopefully my newly formatted JFS partitions will sort this out. At the end of the day, a computer thinks that a is 97 and A is 65, but what humans perceive is more complicated. And a computer should serve a human, not the other way round. Read the excellent book About Face 3. I wholeheartly agree with you on case sensitive file names. It's a crap. I never understood why they created such a nonsense. And now generations of Linux users have to suffer from it. For me it's one of the last obstacles on the way to Linux. ___ fpc-pascal maillist - fpc-pascal@lists.freepascal.org http://lists.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/fpc-pascal
[fpc-pascal] FPC with case insensitive file system under Linux
Hi, [rant] I'm just sick of the idiocy of Linux/Unix with there case sensitive file systems! Google'ing a round for the reason for this, it seems that in the 60's, it was C programmers that decided that searching for case sensitive files was easier to implement (and marginally faster). Well, 40+ years later, that is totally irrelevant - yet we are still suck (by default) with case sensitive file systems. Mac OS X, Windows and OS/2 proves that there is no problems with case insensitive file systems, even for various locales. It also makes it MUCH easier for the end-user. I see no reason why Linux must still be stuck with this. Anyway, that is why I am busy reformatting all my JFS file systems (I have long ago standardised on JFS) with the -O option to make them case insensitive. [/rant] Anyway, back to the point I seriously doubt there would be any problems, but I'll ask anyway. Has anybody here used JFS (case insensitive option enabled) with FPC and experienced any problems? I doubt there would be, because Mac OS X by default is case insensitive too - and it is also a *nix system. In the same breath, any possible Lazarus issues? PS: Anybody know of other Linux file systems that have a case insensitive option? I really thought ext2 had this, but searching now through the man pages, it seems I was mistaken. Anybody know if Btrfs would have such an option? -- Regards, - Graeme - ___ fpGUI - a cross-platform Free Pascal GUI toolkit http://fpgui.sourceforge.net ___ fpc-pascal maillist - fpc-pascal@lists.freepascal.org http://lists.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/fpc-pascal
Re: [fpc-pascal] FPC with case insensitive file system under Linux
On Fri, 24 Feb 2012, Graeme Geldenhuys wrote: Hi, [rant] I'm just sick of the idiocy of Linux/Unix with there case sensitive file systems! Well, some men prefer blondes, others prefer brunettes. [/rant] Anyway, back to the point I seriously doubt there would be any problems, but I'll ask anyway. Has anybody here used JFS (case insensitive option enabled) with FPC and experienced any problems? I doubt there would be, because Mac OS X by default is case insensitive too - and it is also a *nix system. There is a constant in the system unit which controls the 'case sensitive' option for filename comparisions. You may have problems, because it is set to True by default on Linux/Unix See: http://www.freepascal.org/docs-html/rtl/system/filenamecasesensitive.html You can set its value, though, it is a typed constant. Michael. ___ fpc-pascal maillist - fpc-pascal@lists.freepascal.org http://lists.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/fpc-pascal
Re: [fpc-pascal] FPC with case insensitive file system under Linux
On Fri, February 24, 2012 12:21, michael.vancann...@wisa.be wrote: On Fri, 24 Feb 2012, Graeme Geldenhuys wrote: . . Anyway, back to the point I seriously doubt there would be any problems, but I'll ask anyway. Has anybody here used JFS (case insensitive option enabled) with FPC and experienced any problems? I doubt there would be, because Mac OS X by default is case insensitive too - and it is also a *nix system. There is a constant in the system unit which controls the 'case sensitive' option for filename comparisions. You may have problems, because it is set to True by default on Linux/Unix See: http://www.freepascal.org/docs-html/rtl/system/filenamecasesensitive.html You can set its value, though, it is a typed constant. One concrete example - if you create a unit and store it in a file with a mixed case name, it will be found by the compiler in your case. If you share this source with someone else (also using Linux like you), it may not be found. This would be an equal problem if done by someone on Windows, but BTW, I've heard some time ago that Linux kernel contains some files differing only in letter case. If this is the case, you may not be able to upgrade to a newer kernel if your filesystem is case insensitive. Obviously, this is not related to FPC so I suggest directing potential responses to this part to fpc-other. Tomas ___ fpc-pascal maillist - fpc-pascal@lists.freepascal.org http://lists.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/fpc-pascal
Re: [fpc-pascal] FPC with case insensitive file system under Linux
2012/2/24 Tomas Hajny : One concrete example - if you create a unit and store it in a file with a mixed case name, it will be found by the compiler in your case. If you share this source with someone else (also using Linux like you), it may not be found. This would be an equal problem if done by someone on Windows, but As you mentioned, this is a problem with somebody using Windows Linux too. Luckily I'm quite accustomed to using lowercase unit names, but mixed case names inside the 'unit xxx' line and uses clauses. So this should pose a problem to me, thanks for mentioning it though. BTW, I've heard some time ago that Linux kernel contains some files differing only in letter case. If this is the case, you may not be able to I have no idea if this is true or not. At the moment I am only converting my /opt and /home partitions. These are the ones I modify or create files in. The / partition is still case sensitive - so again this shouldn't cause me troubles. -- Regards, - Graeme - ___ fpGUI - a cross-platform Free Pascal GUI toolkit http://fpgui.sourceforge.net ___ fpc-pascal maillist - fpc-pascal@lists.freepascal.org http://lists.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/fpc-pascal
Re: [fpc-pascal] FPC with case insensitive file system under Linux
On Fri, 24 Feb 2012 13:09:09 +0200 Graeme Geldenhuys graemeg.li...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, [rant] I'm just sick of the idiocy of Linux/Unix with there case sensitive file systems! Google'ing a round for the reason for this, it seems that in the 60's, it was C programmers that decided that searching for case sensitive files was easier to implement (and marginally faster). Well, 40+ years later, that is totally irrelevant - yet we are still suck (by default) with case sensitive file systems. Mac OS X, Windows and OS/2 proves that there is no problems with case insensitive file systems, even for various locales. It also makes it MUCH easier for the end-user. I see no reason why Linux must still be stuck with this. Anyway, that is why I am busy reformatting all my JFS file systems (I have long ago standardised on JFS) with the -O option to make them case insensitive. [/rant] The whole last week I cursed the opposite direction (first windows, then OS X). It seems it depends on the current task. Anyway, back to the point I seriously doubt there would be any problems, but I'll ask anyway. Has anybody here used JFS (case insensitive option enabled) with FPC and experienced any problems? I doubt there would be, because Mac OS X by default is case insensitive too - and it is also a *nix system. Linux can handle both. But many Linux tools only support case sensitive files. In the same breath, any possible Lazarus issues? Lazarus expects by default case sensitive file names under Linux. OTOH it tries to find the real file name at various places so it can find more units than the compiler. For example sources copied from Windows. The Delphi converter fixes uses and includes. Some users are using Lazarus with samba shares and ntfs mounts. You can get similar problems when copying code from Windows to OS X, because OS X is not only case insensitive, it normalizes UTF characters. PS: Anybody know of other Linux file systems that have a case insensitive option? I really thought ext2 had this, but searching now through the man pages, it seems I was mistaken. Anybody know if Btrfs would have such an option? Wikipedia has various tables comparing file systems. My recommendation: If you have the choice, use the OS defaults. Many programs will fail otherwise. Mattias ___ fpc-pascal maillist - fpc-pascal@lists.freepascal.org http://lists.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/fpc-pascal
Re: [fpc-pascal] FPC with case insensitive file system under Linux
On 24/02/12 11:09, Graeme Geldenhuys wrote: Hi, [rant] I'm just sick of the idiocy of Linux/Unix with there case sensitive file systems! Google'ing a round for the reason for this, it seems that in the 60's, it was C programmers that decided that searching for case sensitive files was easier to implement (and marginally faster). Well, 40+ years later, that is totally irrelevant - yet we are still suck (by default) with case sensitive file systems. Mac OS X, Windows and OS/2 proves that there is no problems with case insensitive file systems, even for various locales. It also makes it MUCH easier for the end-user. I see no reason why Linux must still be stuck with this. Anyway, that is why I am busy reformatting all my JFS file systems (I have long ago standardised on JFS) with the -O option to make them case insensitive. [/rant] Because case sensitive systems don't create as much confusion. Converting something to upper case is a bit more tricky in some languages. Look at the git macosx (hfs+) screwup a couple of years ago, because of how hfs+ normalizes unicode. Also the Turkish I is a classic stumbling block: http://www.i18nguy.com/unicode/turkish-i18n.html You also seem to assume that file names will always be words. Can they not be codes or hashes? Why will you then want to throw away 26 perfectly good characters? Basically, it all depends what you are doing and what your experiences are. At the end of the day, a computer thinks that a is 97 and A is 65, but what humans perceive is more complicated. Henry ___ fpc-pascal maillist - fpc-pascal@lists.freepascal.org http://lists.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/fpc-pascal
Re: [fpc-pascal] FPC with case insensitive file system under Linux
Graeme Geldenhuys wrote:
Hi,
[rant]
I'm just sick of the idiocy of Linux/Unix with there case sensitive
file systems! Google'ing a round for the reason for this, it seems
that in the 60's, it was C programmers that decided that searching for
case sensitive files was easier to implement (and marginally faster).
I find that rather difficult to believe, since C was barely conceived in
the '60s, and back in those days the dominant character I/O devices were
(EBCDIC) punched cards and the (ASCII) ASR-33- both of which IIRC were
de-facto uppercase-only.
Now it might be that by the time the Bell workers were hacking UNIX and
C that they'd got video terminals with full character sets, and it might
be that they gravitated towards lower-case because of received wisdom
that the increased variation between letters makes them easier to read.
But in any event their reluctance to assume any particular mapping
between upper- and lower-case was probably influenced by the fact that
there were still two major character sets (EBCDIC and ASCII) as well as
several minor ones some of which were being used by the US government
(e.g. Fieldata). As discussed in the context of an IBM mainframe port of
FPC, it's bad enough having to deal with multiple mappings in the system
library without having to define them as part of the language.
In any event, history has shown that they probably made the right
decision, and similarly made the right decision when they pegged UNIX
timestamps to GMT/UTC. The fact that Microsoft made different choices
has caused nothing but grief.
All of which suggests that at the current time, when increasing numbers
of people are wrestling with Unicode, we should all be very much aware
of the possible problems that converting (or not) between similar
characters can cause. For example, I found myself writing this yesterday:
$50: { p P } inject:= #$002A; { * }
$DB: { [ } inject:= #$2190; { ← }
$DD: { ] } inject:= #$2192; { → }
Some founts (e.g. the one used by default by GTK2 Lazarus) use almost
identical glyphs for the braces in those comments, and it's only a
matter of time before somebody with more ingenuity than common sense
tries to use these to slip backdoor code past the casual reviewer.
So in summary, (not) translating characters is something that shouldn't
be approached without deep understanding of the issues.
Anybody know of other Linux file systems that have a case insensitive
option? I really thought ext2 had this, but searching now through the
man pages, it seems I was mistaken. Anybody know if Btrfs would have
such an option?
The obvious ones are Windows and possibly CD filesystems mounted with
appropriate options:
# Additional devices.
/dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy vfatnoauto,user,shortname=winnt 0 0
/dev/hda4 /mnt/zipvfatnoauto,user,shortname=winnt 0 0
/dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom iso9660 noauto,user,ro 0 0
This obviously includes USB mass storage devices such as cameras.
Not sure about btrfs. I tried using it a few months ago but it was very
unclear whether I was getting any useful compression when it was
enabled, I subsequently discovered that that depends on kernel version-
frankly, it's too near the bleeding edge to be used in anger.
--
Mark Morgan Lloyd
markMLl .AT. telemetry.co .DOT. uk
[Opinions above are the author's, not those of his employers or colleagues]
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Re: [fpc-pascal] FPC with case insensitive file system under Linux
In our previous episode, Sven Barth said: Anybody know of other Linux file systems that have a case insensitive option? I really thought ext2 had this, but searching now through the man pages, it seems I was mistaken. Anybody know if Btrfs would have such an option? Did you know that NTFS itself is also a case sensitive filesystem? NTFS is a scary superset of all filesystems that NT had to support as a server, which is why it also supports sparse and multi-forked files. A small correction though, that the common implementation of NTFS (read: NT and derivatives) don't allow to change most of those properties anymore, since there are only global settings for it, and changing them will invalidate your bootdrive. I found that out the hard way when I changed the setting equivalent to noatime ___ fpc-pascal maillist - fpc-pascal@lists.freepascal.org http://lists.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/fpc-pascal
Re: [fpc-pascal] FPC with case insensitive file system under Linux
Hi, You can get similar problems when copying code from Windows to OS X, because OS X is not only case insensitive, it normalizes UTF characters. Well that's a good thing in the long run, because you can guarantee more matches if you always normalize. My recommendation: If you have the choice, use the OS defaults. Many programs will fail otherwise. Heh, I use the case sensitive option on os x, and it hasn't caused me any issues yet - but then that's a bit of a different situation. Mattias -- Noah ___ fpc-pascal maillist - fpc-pascal@lists.freepascal.org http://lists.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/fpc-pascal ___ fpc-pascal maillist - fpc-pascal@lists.freepascal.org http://lists.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/fpc-pascal
