From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 31706 invoked by alias); 24 May 2006 22:07:08 -0000 Received: (qmail 31574 invoked by uid 22791); 24 May 2006 22:07:07 -0000 X-Spam-Check-By: sourceware.org Received: from alageremail2.agere.com (HELO alageremail2.agere.com) (192.19.192.110) by sourceware.org (qpsmtpd/0.31) with ESMTP; Wed, 24 May 2006 22:06:41 +0000 Received: from alerelay.agere.com (alerelay.agere.com [135.14.190.33]) by alageremail2.agere.com (8.13.4/8.13.4) with ESMTP id k4OM6ZiT011072 for ; Wed, 24 May 2006 18:06:38 -0400 (EDT) Received: from PAUMAILF01.ags.agere.com (paumailf01.agere.com [135.14.186.245]) by alerelay.agere.com (8.11.6+Sun/8.11.6) with ESMTP id k4OM6Zr18952 for ; Wed, 24 May 2006 18:06:35 -0400 (EDT) Received: from paumailu03.ags.agere.com ([135.14.190.64]) by PAUMAILF01.ags.agere.com with Microsoft SMTPSVC(6.0.3790.1830); Wed, 24 May 2006 18:06:35 -0400 Content-class: urn:content-classes:message MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Subject: RE: Handling special characters (\/:*?"<>|) gracefully Date: Wed, 24 May 2006 22:07:00 -0000 Message-ID: <4C89134832705D4D85A6CD2EBF38AE0F3E09FD@PAUMAILU03.ags.agere.com> From: "Williams, Gerald S \(Jerry\)" To: "Thread TITTTL'd!" Mailing-List: contact cygwin-talk-help@cygwin.com; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Subscribe: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: cygwin-talk-owner@cygwin.com Reply-To: The Cygwin-Talk Maiming List X-SW-Source: 2006-q2/txt/msg00326.txt.bz2 Brian Dessent wrote: > As I understand it, the win32 API preserves case but is not case > sensitive. The native API is both, so in theory an application that > used only native calls could cope with both README and Readme, but no > win32 app could. So, from the standpoint of Cygwin this is pretty > useless as A) it would take significant code rewrites to use > the native API everywhere (not to mention backcompat hell for 9x/ME) > and B) it would lead to the situation (which we briefly got a taste > of somewhere in a past 1.5.x release) where Cygwin was able to create > files that could not be deleted by Explorer or any other regular > Windows app. I don't want to gum up the main list with this discussion... If you wanted to make such a change in Cygwin, you wouldn't retarget the native API, rather, you'd retarget replacements for the 24 (or so) functions in the Win32 API that stop you from using native naming (these would also handle backward compatibility). I know I'm just being pedantic here, since Cygwin already took a different route, but such a thing is feasible--I looked into it pretty closely at one time. Yes, it's interesting creating files that Windows utilities can't touch (e.g., "con"). And if they try to access either of "hello" and "Hello" they'll only get one (they can still delete both, one at a time). I'd call these "stupid Windows tricks" but I'm sure there's some form of redundancy in that expression. On the other hand, files named "cyg%4D%49%4E%47" aren't all that amenable to manipulation via Windows utilities either, so to some degree it's a matter of perspective. gsw