Re: Deprecate and remove case-insensitive constants?

On 20/09/17 10:30, Tony Marston wrote: > When it comes to software case insensitivity has been the standard since > day 1. When searching for a file in MS Windows you do not have to > specify case as it is not possible to have different files with the same > name but different mixtures of case. When M$ screwed up the filing system by allowing spaces in file names and also dropping case sensitivity - to make life easier for none programmers - we had to get use to this 'new way of working'. It STILL causes problems today so no it was NOT standard from day 1. Although I can't remember now if DOS 8.3 file names enforced uppercase only but all other OS's at that time preserved case in file names. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8.3_filename explains how VFAT added longer file names to FAT ... using an upper case file name below. File capabilities on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_file_systems will demonstrate just how few file systems are case-insensitive. You will see that NTFS is ACTUALLY case-sensitive and it is only the WIN32 subsystem which prevents file names clashes. It's also that system which changes the case of a name when it's displayed or passed over to other systems :( That all said ... the rather limited question here is if the current very restricted case-insensitivity should be removed, or should it be expanded to properly handle constant names in other character sets? That then needs a LOT of work in other areas where the limited ascii case-insensitivity is allowed? Do we NEED case-insensitivity if that is one thing preventing a switch to use of unicode names in the code? -- Lester Caine - G8HFL ----------------------------- Contact - http://lsces.co.uk/wiki/?page=contact L.S.Caine Electronic Services - http://lsces.co.uk EnquirySolve - http://enquirysolve.com/ Model Engineers Digital Workshop - http://medw.co.uk Rainbow Digital Media - http://rainbowdigitalmedia.co.uk