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Comment by bjt | Hacker News Reader

I can see why there would be conflicts going case sensitive -> case insensitive, but I can't see why there would be conflicts going the other way. Am I missing something?

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If you have a file named "MyFile.txt" and another system is looking for "myfile.txt", then it'll not be found and Apple will not let you rename it because it thinks it's a no-op. That's frustrating as hell.

Apple's software (Finder, mv) lets you rename these. But it's true that some tools (I think git) get confused here.

Git init / clone on case-insensitive HFS+ sets `git config core.ignorecase true`, which can lead to confusing behaviour where it ignores a change in the case of a filename.

> The default is false, except git-clone(1) or git-init(1) will probe and set core.ignoreCase true if appropriate when the repository is created.

https://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-config....

I think the parent meant the other way around too.

However, the transition between the case insensitive and case sensitive filesystems isn't going to happen overnight. People will be copying files around both ways for quite some time, so the insensitive -> sensitive case is still going to be a concern.

I think you have it backwards. If you try to expand an archive with FOO.TXT and foo.txt, what should happen if you're writing to a case insensitive file system?

    $ touch HI
    $ touch hi
    $ ls
    HI

So that's disturbing. Another problem is every software you can think of will be comparing two files case insensitively. Almost weekly I get burned by this.

    $ touch HI
    $ test -f hi && echo ok
    ok

That's not convincing me that I have it backwards. I was responding to this point in the parent comment:

> many case insensitive hard drives would be copied into new machines and there would be millions of conflicts

I still don't see where you get a conflict copying the contents of a case-insensitive file system to a case-sensitive one.

> I still don't see where you get a conflict copying the contents of a case-insensitive file system to a case-sensitive one.

Because some apps create MyFile.txt and expect to be able to access it later by myfile.txt. Adobe's applications, for example.

I had no idea. That's horrifying.

Open up the various folders of Adobe's software (on Windows). The DLLs are a mish-mash of all lowercase and upper-lower mixes. Heck, open up System32; the DLLs there are definitely not case-sensitive capable (`kbd*.dll' being one example). In fact, I bet you there's at least one program on your computer that accesses the Program Files using `C:\PROGRAM FILES (X86)' instead of `%programfiles(x86)%'. In fact, even environment variables aren't case-sensitive.

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