case sensitive directory names

case sensitive directory names

[Kevin Hughes]

I have a bad habit of using upper and lower case names in my directory names - not mixing them but having a directory called UPPERCASE rather than uppercase.

This is no problem on Unix which copes as it handles upper and lower case for the names. NT does not - all files are essentially lower case. Fine I can cope with that but gnuwin appears to remember the name I typed and then uses that in the answer to pwd. Hence can do the following


bash$ pwd
/devel/kh/CC/SC
bash$ cd  ..
bash$ pwd
/devel/kh/CC
bash$ cd sc
bash$ pwd
/devel/kh/CC/sc

Since I have scripts that check "where" I am in a directory structure before they will do anything this gets a bit tedious. I also have scripts which store away the answer to "pwd" and check it next time I try to do things. I

Is there any real reason for this behaviour.? Can I turn it off and force lower case always? 



Kevin

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Re: case sensitive directory names

[Jason Zions]

It's not gnuwin that "remembers" the original case you typed - it's the
filesystem.

NTFS and FAT16 (under NT, anyway) are case-storing filesystems; Win32 is
case-insensitive when looking at the stored filenames.

Instead of using the bash built-in pwd, use /bin/pwd to get the "real"
working directory in a case-consistent way. /bin/pwd walks the
filesystem to find out where you are, while the bash built-in tracks it
by assuming a starting point and watching the cd commands fly by. (If
you cd through a symlink, I think you'll get wildly different answers
from the builtin pwd and /bin/pwd; I don't know which is more useful to
your scripts.)

Jason
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Re: case sensitive directory names

[Guy Gascoigne - Piggford]

At 10:47 AM 12/4/97 -0700, you wrote:
>It's not gnuwin that "remembers" the original case you typed - it's the
>filesystem.

Whilst this may be true, what I see happening is that under bash (and not
under cmd.exe) if I cd to a directory with the name typed in lowercase,
certain other non-cygwin programs (clearcase) inherit this wrong pathname.
To me this means that he problem is separate from bash' intrenal concept of
what the CWD is.

>NTFS and FAT16 (under NT, anyway) are case-storing filesystems; Win32 is
>case-insensitive when looking at the stored filenames.
>
>Instead of using the bash built-in pwd, use /bin/pwd to get the "real"
>working directory in a case-consistent way. /bin/pwd walks the
>filesystem to find out where you are, while the bash built-in tracks it
>by assuming a starting point and watching the cd commands fly by. (If
>you cd through a symlink, I think you'll get wildly different answers
>from the builtin pwd and /bin/pwd; I don't know which is more useful to
>your scripts.)

Well, actually /bin/pwd prints out the same 'wrong case' version of the CWD
as bash does.

Guy


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Re: case sensitive directory names

[Jason Zions]

Sorry one and all - I thought gnuwin had a /bin/pwd that was distinct
from the shell built-in. Might actually be a useful tool to build - one
that uses Win32 calls to get the precise as-stored pathname of the
current directory.

Jason
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Re: case sensitive directory names

[Guy Gascoigne - Piggford]

At 02:23 PM 12/5/97 -0700, you wrote:
>Sorry one and all - I thought gnuwin had a /bin/pwd that was distinct
>from the shell built-in. Might actually be a useful tool to build - one
>that uses Win32 calls to get the precise as-stored pathname of the
>current directory.

Oh there is a separate executable, though it's in
C:\gnuwin32\b18\H-i386-cygwin32\bin rather than \bin.  Either way, it
returns the same thing as the builtin.

Guy

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Re: case sensitive directory names

[Earnie Boyd]

>From: Kevin Hughes <kh@wg.icl.co.uk>
>To: "Gnuwin95 (E-mail)" <gnu-win32@cygnus.com>
>Subject: case sensitive directory names
>Date: Thu, 4 Dec 1997 09:41:33 -0800
>
>I have a bad habit of using upper and lower case names in my directory 
names - not mixing them but having a directory called UPPERCASE rather 
than uppercase.
>
>This is no problem on Unix which copes as it handles upper and lower 
case for the names. NT does not - all files are essentially lower case. 
Fine I can cope with that but gnuwin appears to remember the name I 
typed and then uses that in the answer to pwd. Hence can do the 
following
>
>
>bash$ pwd
>/devel/kh/CC/SC
>bash$ cd  ..
>bash$ pwd
>/devel/kh/CC
>bash$ cd sc
>bash$ pwd
>/devel/kh/CC/sc
>
>Since I have scripts that check "where" I am in a directory structure 
before they will do anything this gets a bit tedious. I also have 
scripts which store away the answer to "pwd" and check it next time I 
try to do things. I
>
>Is there any real reason for this behaviour.? Can I turn it off and 
force lower case always? 
>

The real problem is that the underlying file system is case insensitive.  
When you cd, an environment variable is set that the pwd command reads 
and echos.  Because lowercase and LOWERCASE resolve to finding the 
directory then the environment variable will be set to what you keyed on 
the command line.

UNIX's file system on the otherhand is case sensitive.  So if lowercase 
exists and LOWERCASE doesn't then when you cd LOWERCASE you would get an 
error.

What problems is this nature causing?  From your examples I don't see a 
real problem as the directory names should be found in either case.  If 
it is something you really want you could modify the result from the pwd 
command to translate to lowercase.

-        \\||//
---o0O0--Earnie--0O0o----
-earnie_boyd@hotmail.com-
------ooo0O--O0ooo-------


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Re: case sensitive directory names

[Guy Gascoigne - Piggford]

At 06:18 AM 12/4/97 PST, you wrote:
>What problems is this nature causing?  From your examples I don't see a 
>real problem as the directory names should be found in either case.  If 
>it is something you really want you could modify the result from the pwd 
>command to translate to lowercase.

I can give you one poblem that I've noticed.  We use Clearcase for source
control, many clearcase commands require knowledge about the Current
Working Directory, now take the following scenario.

I have a directory:

s:\source\Stuff\Project1

if, in bash, I cd //s/source/stuff/project1, it works and appears to set
the current directory correctly, however it actually sets the dir to be
what was typed case and all), future pwd calls return the lowercase name
and not the real mixed case name, this causes Clearcase all kinds of problems.

Now I realise that part of the problem here is that Clearcase's handling of
a case insensitive filesystem is somewhat lacking, but the behaviour of the
Cygwin cd command is also somewhat lacking.  Having not looked at it, I
can't say exactly where the problem lies, but it would be nice to fix it
one day.

Guy

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RE: case sensitive directory names

[Kevin Hughes]

-----Original Message-----
From:	Jason Zions [SMTP:jazz@softway.com]
Sent:	Thursday, December 04, 1997 5:47 PM
To:	Kevin Hughes
Cc:	Gnuwin95 (E-mail)
Subject:	Re: case sensitive directory names

It's not gnuwin that "remembers" the original case you typed - it's the
filesystem.

NTFS and FAT16 (under NT, anyway) are case-storing filesystems; Win32 is
case-insensitive when looking at the stored filenames.

Instead of using the bash built-in pwd, use /bin/pwd to get the "real"
working directory in a case-consistent way. /bin/pwd walks the
filesystem to find out where you are, while the bash built-in tracks it
by assuming a starting point and watching the cd commands fly by. (If
you cd through a symlink, I think you'll get wildly different answers
from the builtin pwd and /bin/pwd; I don't know which is more useful to
your scripts.)

Jason


Jason,
	Thanks for the suggestion but you have left me confused. 

The only pwd I know about is the pwd in the bash shell which I thought was the same as the pwd.exe in 
/gnuwin32/b18/H-i386-cygwin32/bin. There is no /bin/pwd

I tried calling the /gnuwin32/b18/H-i386-cygwin32/bin/pwd directly and get exactly the same results as doing pwd

What is the /bin/pwd you are refering to


Kevin



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