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How can I rename files in LMFS just to change the alphabetic case?



    Date: Tue, 1 Dec 87 17:26 EST
    From: Roland Zito-Wolf <RJZ@JASPER.Palladian.COM>

	Date: Tue, 1 Dec 87 09:44 EST
	From: Scott McKay <SWM@SAPSUCKER.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>

	    Date: Tue, 1 Dec 87 06:35 EST
	    From: Jeffrey Mark Siskind <Qobi@ZERMATT.LCS.MIT.EDU>

	    There seems to be some very annoying behavior in LMFS regarding alphabetic
	    case in files names.

	    1) I can have a directory, such as Z:>Qobi> which has subdirectories
	    Z:>QOBI>memos>, Z:>qobi>prolog-alr, and Z:>Qobi>remote. Why does this
	    happen. It is *VERY ANNOYING*.

	    ...

	It's not really a "bug" in the sense that you are thinking.  The root of
	this behavior is that parsed pathnames are interned.  There has been a
	longstanding debate about whether or not they should be interned, which
	I will not go into here.

	There is a way to bludgeon around this, but it is fraught with potential
     danger, so I won't say what it is.

    I've wondered about this too. How about if you put in a method to change the
    filename string, under the restriction that the new filename would be string-equal
    to the old one, ignoring case? Would
    there still be cases where this would damamge something?

"No comment"

    For that matter, why cant one set up some general mode flag which causes all
    pathnames to get put into a generic form (say, uppercase the host and lowercase the
    rest)? Dont tell me the filesystem is case-sensitive!

It depends which filesystem.  Unix is case-sensitive.  The point is that
such a "general mode flag" needs to be per pathname-host type.