Is HFS really "scary"?

[Jochem Huhmann]

On 2008-02-07, at 16:53, Jordan K. Hubbard wrote:

>
> On Feb 7, 2008, at 2:45 AM, Jochem Huhmann wrote:
>
>> There's no way to take that further (in the file system) by  
>> integrating even more useful fuzziness like recognizing "f" for  
>> "ph", or ignoring accents or whatever. If you're dealing with  
>> international users a case insensitive file system may save you a  
>> few rounds for figuring out "Fluffy" against "fluffy", but you'd  
>> still have to figure out "exposé" against "expose" or "foto"  
>> against "photo" and there is no way to solve that at file system  
>> level. Case is only a small part of the actual problem. This is  
>> clearly something that has to be dealt with in the UI libraries  
>> and not in the file system. And this is the reason why many people  
>> feel that a case insensitive file system is a ill-conceived hack.  
>> You can't really expect to deserve praise for painting yourself  
>> into a corner...
>
> In that case, let me be clear.  I'm not asking for or expecting  
> "praise for HFS" by any means, I was simply trying to explain some  
> of the thought processes which evidently went into that first  
> decision to make HFS case insensitive.  It was a decision made long  
> ago, well before I came to Apple, and maybe it makes sense today,  
> maybe it does not.  Those decisions are, in any case, made far  
> above my pay grade and I'm not here to apologize for HFS or to  
> suggest that I can affect its future roadmap in any way.  This  
> discussion started as a reaction to some highly unspecific comments  
> made by Linus, nothing more.

Sorry for that. The "you" in this last sentence was a metaphorical  
one, I didn't mean to imply it's you who is to praise or blame.

Also let me add that IMHO the case-insensitivity of HFS+ is rarely a  
real problem and I'm not advocating to make it case sensitive by  
default. Not without adding some smartness on a higher level, anyway.  
This is surely an interesting problem which would deserve some  
innovation (and discussion).

	Jochem