Would it be more efficient to say Unix vs Windows?
this post was submitted on 01 Feb 2025
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The number of times I had to ask "how can I tell where the file 'physically'" (I know) "lives" on the network when I took up work at a Windows shop, it was just baffling. And Win people couldn't understand what I was asking.
There's a location for this effing thing. I want to know where it is, really! How do I get that info?!
Duel of the fates: \//\
Shouldn’t the blade be green? I thought Luke wore all black in ROTJ when he got hos green lightsaber.
File systems aren't even real.
at that point operating systems are also not real.
What is this "real" concept anyway?
Adam Savage famously stated on Mythbusters "I reject your reality and substitute my own"
Sure, but is reality even real then? Is anything real?
Not that I meant to get all pop-philosophical on this beautiful Sunday morning, sorry about that.
I, too, first heard this quote from Adam on Mythbusters as a child. But, I'm pretty sure I also heard it was said first by some philosopher.
I would later be informed that "some philosopher" was the 1984 film The Dungeon Master.
Only apparently that was not the first, and it was said in a 1974 episode of Doctor Who. Well, someone on Reddit said that, and linked to this WikiQuote page but on that page it also says it's from The Dungeon master.
So, I don't know what to believe any more, and I still hope it was actually an obscure lost quote of Rene Magritte or something because in my head it would just make sense.
Yes
Interpretation of reality is individual
Reality itself is relative
But if it didn't exist we wouldn't be chatting about it right now
That's my reality anyway
What's yours?
Fun fact, though: Linux is the only case-sensitive one.
Edit: I feel silly for forgetting that it's all about the choice of FS. If anyone needs anything from me, I'll be in the corner, coloring.
I once ran into a bug in an Arduino program where it wouldn't compile. The author blamed my "broken environment". Turned out, he had included "arduino.h" instead of the correct "Arduino.h".
From a technical standpoint, the windows NTFS filesystem is designed inherently case sensitive, just windows doesn't allow creating case sensitive files.
Connecting an NTFS drive to linux, you can create two separate files readme.txt and Readme.txt.
Using windows, you can see both files in the filesystem, but chances are most (if not all) software will struggle accessing both files, opening readme.txt might instead open Readme.txt or vice versa.
You're correct. I once was trying to rename a file in Windows in a git repository that had a wrong capitalization. It was tricky.
Such a microsoft thing to do.
NTFS was designed back in the mid 90s, when the plan was to have the single NT kernel with different subsystems on top of it, some of those layers (i.e. POSIX) needed case sensitivity while others (Win32 and OS/2) didn't.
It only looks odd because the sole remaining subsystem in use (Win32) barely makes use of any of the kernel features, like they're only just now enabling long file paths.
For a few years now, Windows has had the capability of marking certain directories as case-sensitive. So you can have a mixed-case-sensitivity filesystem experience now. Yeah. :/
Although you can use case insensitive filesystems with Linux, and case sensitive filesystems with macOS. I believe the case sensitivity is a function of the specific filesystem
but yeah, practically, the root for Linux is always case sensitive, and APFS ~~ain't~~ is only if you ask it to be ( https://support.apple.com/lv-lv/guide/disk-utility/dsku19ed921c/mac ).
When case insensitivity is the default I always wonder how many apps unknowingly rely on that due to typos somewhere. I encountered this once while porting a Windows/macOS app to Linux that someone imported a module with the wrong case and nobody noticed
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As is right and proper.
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This meme is way more clever than it should be
Can you please explain? I've never used Mac and it's been a long time since I've properly used windows.
File paths in Linux and Mac use / while Windows uses \
Take a look at the angle of the lightsabers.
Technically, Windows understands both / and \. I personally always use / just because it's easier to type that.
I never would've gotten that!
Like I said, way more clever than it should be. Props to the creator for sure.
The lightsaber orientation is the same as the slash orientation
Ha, neat!
Didn't realize until I read your comment. Thanks.
It's not something the Jedi would tell you.
I didn't realise until I read that comment, your comment and the other comment about slash direction.
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I hate that I need to use escape characters when creating something for windows.
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You can actually use / as a path separator on Windows in functions like fopen(), because it supports some ancient version of POSIX standard.
There used to be an undocumented setting in early versions of MS-DOS that would allow the setting of the command option character to something other than the slash, and if you did that, the slash automatically became the path separator. All you needed was SWITCHAR=- in your CONFIG.SYS and DOS was suddenly very Unix-y.
It was taken out after a while because, with the feature being undocumented, too many people didn't know about it and bits of software - especially batch files, would have been reliant on things being "wrong". The modern support for regular slash in API calls probably doesn't use any of the old SWITCHAR code, but it is, in some way, the spiritual descendant of that secret feature.
Here's an old blog that talks about it: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-gb/archive/blogs/larryosterman/why-is-the-dos-path-character
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Also the internet belongs on the left.
And really, Linux/macos could be reduced to "Unix" https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/Unix_history-simple.svg
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