Dealing with case insensitivity

Fri Mar 15 02:48:00 GMT 2002

Jukka Santala wrote:
> > Maybe this extra rule for Windows isn't really necessary, but it is
> > the only extra 'gotcha' I can think of.
>> Unfortunately, at least Windows filesystem is also incapable of
> storing filenames with only case-differences. This problem may not
> be encountered in common uses, but on the few occasions that it does
> bite, it bites hard.

One of the original examples of the problem was that awt/image/ might
be confused with awt/Image.java, simply because "awt.image" in the
source might lead to a lookup of awt/image.java, which succeeds when
it shouldn't really.
I agree with what you are saying about there being no possibility of
storing both TestClass.java and Testclass.java in the same directory
on Windows or Darwin. However, this must also be a problem for
existing Java dev-tools on those platforms, so writing portable Java
source would mean avoiding those kinds of names. 
As I see it, this work-around only has to work for .java and .class
filenames and their directories -- this doesn't have to be a universal
file-system solution for the platform.
Jim
-- 
 Jim Peters (_)/=\~/_(_) jim@uazu.net
 (_) /=\ ~/_ (_)
 UazÃº (_) /=\ ~/_ (_) http://
 B'ham, UK (_) ____ /=\ ____ ~/_ ____ (_) uazu.net