[geeks] Weird MacOS issue

[Jonathan C. Patschke]

On Fri, 26 Dec 2008, der Mouse wrote:

>> Except that, to work around errors in the CDDB data, the application
>> itself would have to treat the underlying filesystem as
>> case-insensitive by globbing the other-case variant of each character
>> when trying to find a file.
>
> Why?  Why should it do that any more than it should match up a Def
> Leppard track with some fool's mis-identification of it as Deaf Leopard?

Because that's the sort of uncomputable magic that end users expect.

If it's a "bug" that iTunes can't handle see the similarity between "Wall
Of Voodoo" and "Wall of Voodoo", as the previous poster screamed about,
then really the request is to make the filesystem act case-insensitive
again by adding code in the application level.

> (This is, as far as I know, a hypothetical example, but if you think all
> the errors in the CDDB data are limited to case mistakes, I'm fairly
> sure you're dreaming.)

Oh no, I accept that most of the CDDB data is crap, but that's where
iTunes obtains its naming information when

> And, if it should, why is it the underlying filesystem's job to
> implement that?

I never said that it was.  I specifically said that the application itself
should handle the problem.

If, the assertion is that it's a bug that an application "breaks" on a
case-sensitive filesystem by not seeing files whose names only differ in
case as having the same name (as was mentioned in
<49525C87.7060505 at metrocast.net>).

Really, there are only three options:
         1) FS handles it (as is the case on HFS, FAT, and NTFS)
         2) Application handles it (which isn't the case anywhere, that
            I've seen).
         3) It doesn't get handled, and the end user uses something else.

Conveniently, though, most of the filesystems that typical end-users see 
tend to be case-aware, rather than case-sensitive.  Generally, this is
what end-users want.

-- 
Jonathan Patschke < "There is great satisfaction in building good tools
Elgin, TX          > for other people to use."
USA               <                                     --Freeman Dyson