Wheeler: Fixing Unix/Linux/POSIX Filenames [LWN.net]

Wheeler: Fixing Unix/Linux/POSIX Filenames

Posted Mar 26, 2009 18:59 UTC (Thu) by njs (subscriber, #40338)
In reply to: Wheeler: Fixing Unix/Linux/POSIX Filenames by clugstj
Parent article: Wheeler: Fixing Unix/Linux/POSIX Filenames

...I started a thread by pointing to technical documentation on how this has worked for the last 8 years in the world's most widely-deployed Unix, and your response is that this is crazy to even consider because we have no way to know what will happen? C'mon... engage the actual arguments. I don't think it's obvious what the technically best solution is, but just because you haven't thought about the relevant details doesn't mean they aren't knowable.

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Wheeler: Fixing Unix/Linux/POSIX Filenames

Posted Mar 29, 2009 21:27 UTC (Sun) by clugstj (subscriber, #4020) [Link] (1 responses)

I'm sorry, but when you said, that any of these propositions is better than the current situation, I HAD to disagree. In what way is the current situation so bad that any proposal is better that the current situation?

Wheeler: Fixing Unix/Linux/POSIX Filenames

Posted Mar 30, 2009 0:07 UTC (Mon) by njs (subscriber, #40338) [Link]

You cannot, in general, convert a filename to text. That's the fundamental problem that any of the proposals would solve.

Wheeler: Fixing Unix/Linux/POSIX Filenames

Posted Mar 29, 2009 21:30 UTC (Sun) by clugstj (subscriber, #4020) [Link] (1 responses)

OS X is trivial to handle. It only has to continue to work in a compatible way with the previous Mac OS - which wasn't UNIX. So using it as an example of how to "fix" these problems is not a good idea if you care about supporting 40+ years of UNIX programs - which is why this is difficult to change.

Wheeler: Fixing Unix/Linux/POSIX Filenames

Posted Mar 29, 2009 22:07 UTC (Sun) by foom (subscriber, #14868) [Link]

Eh...but OSX *does* run 40+ years of UNIX programs. It's pretty clear that the change to require
UTF-8 (and even the change to be case insensitive!) didn't bother most programs.