Is HFS really "scary"?

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

On Feb 6, 2008, at 7:17 AM, David Corking wrote:

> He is known for exaggeration.  He once called all C++ programmers
> unspeakable names on a mailing list.

It's also worth noting that "scary" can mean "I don't understanding  
it".  While I think it is a mistake to try to micro-analyze everything  
that comes out of Linus' mouth, I really don't think he was saying  
that he finds HFS+ unsafe to use.

> I personally am I bit frustrated with HFS+, as I experienced
> first-hand the limits of its fsck utility (*).   But I am no
> filesystem expert, and my one anecdote would not be enough to justify
> a 'crappy' label.

The only problem that I've ever had (and I'm no expert either) is when  
I'd installed
the perl script for fetching HTTP headers in

   /usr/local/bin/HEAD

and found latter when I called the traditional head(1) (which lives  
further down the PATH in /usr/bin) HEAD was picked up instead of head.

I must admit that I find case distinction in HFS "scary" (meaning I  
don't understand it.)

-j



-- 
Jeffrey Goldberg                        http://www.goldmark.org/jeff/