shiva@well.sf.ca.us (Kenneth Porter) (05/20/91)
I'm using FTP's PCTCP for OS/2 1.1 with NFS mounted disks from a Unix box. The FTP documentation indicates that when using wild cards to specify files names (eg. copy *.*), the resulting file names returned from the operating system (presumably by DosFindFirst/DosFindNext) are always uppercased. This is a real pain on the Unix side where lower case is the rule. Has Microsoft or IBM considered the effect of case on installable file systems? This should affect HPFS as well, although not quite so much since HPFS is case sensitive only when creating a file name, not when reading or matching one. Ken (shiva@well.sf.ca.us)
backman@FTP.COM (Larry Backman) (05/20/91)
>> >> >> I'm using FTP's PCTCP for OS/2 1.1 with NFS mounted disks from >> a Unix box. The FTP documentation indicates that when using >> wild cards to specify files names (eg. copy *.*), the resulting >> file names returned from the operating system (presumably by >> DosFindFirst/DosFindNext) are always uppercased. This is a >> real pain on the Unix side where lower case is the rule. >> Yes; this is a pain. It leaves a mess behind & there is no way around it. I've considered adding a case= {LC | UC} switch to idrive.ini to make life easier from the UNIX side. This of course is a performance hit however, as each time a file is opened its has to be case checked (what if you really do have a file.TXT?) & case swapped as needed. >> Has Microsoft or IBM considered the effect of case on >> installable file systems? This should affect HPFS as well, >> although not quite so much since HPFS is case sensitive only >> when creating a file name, not when reading or matching one. >> They have, I had many long arguments with them last year, hopefully some of it sunk in. Unfortunenately; it seems they never considered Unix & NFS in their plans, and made the grand assumption that they controlled the namespace of any file systems. Just for your information, the case issue is a *real* performance drag. Whenever a filename lookup fails; NFS has to go back & read the entire directory & serach for a case-insensitiove match. This adds many extra packets to your normal transactions. for instance: if you have a file: file.TXT & you call it up in your editor: e file.txt the initial lookup of file.txt fails; NFS goes back & reads the entire directory ( at least 2-4 extra packets!) finds file.TXT and loads it. The worst part of it is that the semi-case sensitivity wreaks havoc with any attempt to maintain a FileName/Handle/Attribute cache. I've got tons of space in OS/2 to maintain such a cache; but half the time I can't trust it due to case {in}sensitivity issues. Larry