this post was submitted on 28 Jan 2025
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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 day ago (2 children)

So if someone tells me to look for a file amongst a long list, I need to look in two different areas- the uppercase and lowercase areas.

I get why it's more technically correct to differentiate, but from the perspective of a human user, it's a pain in the ass.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago) (1 children)

I'm with you, and not just from a "human" perspective. Also when writing small programs meant to be relatively lean/simple it can be a problem when the user expects it to find a particular file regardless of its case (will it be DOOM.WAD or doom.wad? Doom.wad? Doom.WAD? ... guess it'll have to be [Dd][Oo][Oo][Mm].[Ww][Aa][Dd] and import some globbing library as extra dependency... that, or list the whole directory regardless its size and lower/upper every single filename until you find a matching one...)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 20 minutes ago

Oh jeez, I hadn't even thought about capitalisation in the file extension. That would be especially confusing if extensions are hidden- the user would be presented with two files that look exactly the same.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

if you look for a file you type the first letters for the file explorer to jump to the matching name. Retype to jump to the next fitting entry. If you don't know about this, you can put your string in the search field. If you don't know about this, you can sort by metadata like file size or date of last change.

It is a non problem.

Also most workplaces tend to develop a file naming convention, either explicitly or implicitly.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

But do I type 'ImportantFile', or 'importantfile'?

As I understand it, if I searched for either of these strings in a case sensitive file system, I would not find a file called 'IMPORTANTFILE'.

At best, a case sensitive file system makes naming conventions more complex. At worst , it obfuscates files. I just can't imagine a scenario where it would be helpful. Do you really see a need to have a file called 'aaaAaa' and a totally separate one called 'aaAaaa'?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago)

The search string is case insensitive. The file name isnt.

So you will find all of them.