Sponsored Content
Top Forums UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers Unix History Question: Why are filenames/dirnames case sentsitive in Unix? Post 66435 by deckard on Monday 14th of March 2005 11:46:20 AM
Old 03-14-2005
Unix History Question: Why are filenames/dirnames case sentsitive in Unix?

I tried looking for the answer online and came up with only a few semi-answers as to why file and directory names are case sensitive in Unix. Right off the bat, I'll say this doesn't bother me. But I run into tons of Windows and OpenVMS admins in my day job who go batty when they have to deal with case sensitivity and I hate not really having a good answer for them. The best answer I can give them is that it allows for more filenames in the namespace, but they usually just grunt and reply, "yeah, but who cares". Knowing that Unix seems to have been refined into a really well thought out OS over the decades, I'm sure there must be a reason why case sensitivity was kept (other than legacy compatibility) instead of moving to a case insensitive naming convention. Any gurus out there have any good answers I can give them besides, "You'll get nothing and like it too!!" ;P
 

10 More Discussions You Might Find Interesting

1. News, Links, Events and Announcements

Unix History Link

Link describe the Step by step formation of Unix http://perso.wanadoo.fr/levenez/unix/ Also: - History - Author of First Unix C Language - Unix Family research Tree - BSD and Sun History chart - Technical Comparison between Unix Diffrences (4 Replies)
Discussion started by: killerserv
4 Replies

2. UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

The history of UNIX and the ideas behind it

Hi. I am new here, and this is my first post at the UNIX.com forums. I have read the book Fire in the Valley: The Making of the Personal Computer, and I noticed that neither UNIX nor Linux was mentioned once in the book. Why is this? What was UNIX's place in the early days of personal computers? ... (6 Replies)
Discussion started by: elendil
6 Replies

3. Shell Programming and Scripting

Unix filenames and spaces

I have files on my unix boxes that users have created with spaces. Example: /tmp/project plan ls -l "/tmp/project plan" works fine. $/tmp>ls -l "/tmp/project plan" -rw-r--r-- 1 root other 0 Jan 31 12:32 /tmp/project plan I created a file called test and put just the... (2 Replies)
Discussion started by: x96riley3
2 Replies

4. Shell Programming and Scripting

find filenames like unix commands

Hi, I need to write a small script to search in some specific directories to check if any file is present with a unix command name... Means if the directory contains any files like cat, vi, grep, find etc i need to list those files into a file. Please help Thanks, D (6 Replies)
Discussion started by: deepakgang
6 Replies

5. UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

History feature in Unix

Hi, I'm working on two flavours of unix namely HP-UX and sun solaris. In HP-UX, for executing the previous commands, i use the arrow keys. But on sun solaris this is not working. Can anyone explain how to use history feature effectively in sun solaris os? Thanks (4 Replies)
Discussion started by: venkatesht
4 Replies

6. UNIX and Linux Applications

Unix History

Hi everybody Im Megadrink!!! This is my first thred. Ive recently been introduced to Unix and i was interested in Unix's History. Can anyone give me a breif History On Unix. Just when it was invented/released. Maybe someother cool things about it. Thx for the information in advance!! :D (2 Replies)
Discussion started by: Megadrink
2 Replies

7. What is on Your Mind?

Filenames with hyphens - UNIX style?

Hello everyone! Filenames with hyphens instead of everything else that can be as a space - is it particularly UNIX style of naming or a general practice? It kinda is so in my mind that DOS guys use underscores as spaces and UNIX guys use dashes. Is it so? (5 Replies)
Discussion started by: guest115
5 Replies

8. Shell Programming and Scripting

Appending date to UNIX Filenames

Hello, I have a file name in the below format and have to append the date as _$currdate. kchik_UK_lo.txt_$currdate. The above should be the format and I dont want to put entire filename as above in the code, but it should give me the output as the above filename.Can anyone please help... (7 Replies)
Discussion started by: harika03
7 Replies

9. Shell Programming and Scripting

History file in UNIX

commands to view the history file in unix. I am not sure whether it is bash_history.sh (1 Reply)
Discussion started by: ramkumar15
1 Replies

10. What is on Your Mind?

The Great History of UNIX (1969-1999) | 30 Years of UNIX History | YouTube Video

I am pleased to announce this new video in 1080 HD for UNIX lovers honoring thirty years of UNIX history spanning from 1969 to 1999 presented in 150 seconds (two and a half minutes) in 1080 HD, celebrating the 50th anniversary of UNIX. The Great History of UNIX (1969-1999) | 30 Years of UNIX... (8 Replies)
Discussion started by: Neo
8 Replies
PURITY(6)                                                          Games Manual                                                          PURITY(6)

NAME
purity - a general purpose purity test SYNOPSIS
/usr/games/purity [ flags ] [ testname ] DESCRIPTION
Purity is an interactive purity test program with a simple, user interface and datafile format. For each test, questions are printed to the your terminal, and you are prompted for an answer to the current question. At a prompt, these are your choices: y Answer "yes" to the question. n Answer "no" to the question. b Backup one question, if you answered it incorrectly, or someone is watching you take the test, and you don't (or do) want to admit a different answer. r Redraw the current question. q Quit the test, and print the current score. ? Print a help screen for the current prompt. k Kill a section of the test. This skips all the questions of the test until the next subject heading. a Toggle answer mode between real answers and obfuscated answers. Real answers print "yes" and "no", while obfuscated answers are "Maybe" and "maybe". Obfuscated answers are preferred if you are shy, and don't want people to be able to read your answers over your shoulder as you take the test. d Toggle dERanGe output. s Print your current score on the test you are taking. l Toggle score logging. At the end of the test, your score is printed out. For most purity tests, lower scores denote more "experience" of the test material. FLAGS
These are the command line flags for the test. -a Show real answers (i.e. "yes" and "no") instead of obfuscated ones (i.e. "Maybe" and "maybe") as you answer the questions. -d PrINt THe tESt in DerANgeD pRInT. -f Take the test in fast mode. Only the questions are printed, and not any other text blocks, like the introdution, subject headers, and the conclusion. -l Take the test without having your score logged. -p Print the test without prompting for answers. This is useful for making hard copies of the tests without having to edit out the prompts by hand. -r Decrypt the test using the Rot 13 algorithm. This is done as a form of "protection", such that if you read a rot13 test and it offends you, it's your own fault. -z zoom through more prompts in large text blocks. The default is to prompt the user for more when a screenful of text has been printed without any user input. DATAFILE FORMAT
The format of the datafiles is a very simple format, intended such that new tests can quickly and easily be converted to run with the test. There are four types of text in a purity test datafile. Each type is contained in a bracket type of punctuation. The definitions are as follows: the styles of text blocks are: { plain text block } [ subject header ] ( test question ) and < conclusion > Plain text blocks are printed out character for character. Subject headers are preceded by their subject numbers, starting at 1, and then printed as text blocks. Questions are preceded by their numbers, and then prompt the user to answer the question, keeping track of the user's current score. Conclusions first calculate and print the user's score for the test, then print out the conclusion as a text block. If you wish to include any of the various bracket punctuation in your text, the backslash ("") character will escape the next character. To print a question with parentheses, you would use the following format: (have you ever written a purity test (like this one)?) the output would be this: 1. have you ever written a purity test (like this one)? and then it would have asked the user for her/his answer. For a generic datafile, use the "sample" datafile for the test. FILES
/var/games/purity.scores the score logfile /usr/share/games/purity/* test data files AUTHOR
Eric Lechner, lechner@ucscb.ucsc.edu 18 December 1989 PURITY(6)
All times are GMT -4. The time now is 05:45 AM.
Unix & Linux Forums Content Copyright 1993-2022. All Rights Reserved.
Privacy Policy