scp ignores case in filenames?

[Richard L. Hamilton]

> On Jan 19, 2018, at 08:44, Jan Stary <hans at stare.cz> wrote:
> 
> On Jan 19 06:48:37, rlhamil at smart.net wrote:
>> By default, macOS (like Windows with NTFS filesystem)
>> is case-preserving but NOT case-sensitive.
>> In other words, names that differ only by case
>> refer to the same file.
> 
> That's exactly what I was missing. Thanks.
> 
>> For a case-preserving but case-insensitive filesystem,
>> the behavior was exactly as I'd expect.
> 
> My problem was I didn't know the FS is like that.
> 
>> One can create either HFS+ or APFS filesystems to be case-sensitive,
> 
> I tend to leave the OS installation to its defaults,
> unless needed otherwise (this might be the case though :-).
> 
>> but for backwards compatibility with macOS's pre-Unix ancestors,
> 
> Huh. What are those?
> 
>> that is obviously not the default.
> 
> More importantly (to me, anyway),
> it _is_ the default on any other UNIX I have seen.
> 
>> Ideally, all programs would refer consistently to file names,
>> so except for how a human types them in, it wouldn't matter. 
> 
> "Ideally", the filename is exactly what I said it is.
> 
>> But any exception would be broken on a case-sensitive filesystem;
> 
> What "exception"?
> 
> "FILE" is "FILE". "file" is "file".
> Nothing to do with each other.

Well, no; the rules are whatever the filesystem says they are, not what you think they should be. :-)

And it's still perfectly legitimate; As long as a case-sensitive filesystem is supported, that doesn't prevent it from being called Unix.

http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/basedefs/V1_chap02.html <http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/basedefs/V1_chap02.html>
The system may provide non-standard extensions. These are features not required by POSIX.1-2008 and may include, but are not limited to:
[...]
Non-conforming file systems (for example, legacy file systems for which _POSIX_NO_TRUNC is false, case-insensitive file systems, or network file systems)

(emphasis mine)

The problem though would be with non-conforming _applications_, which assume that "FILE", "File", and "file" are all the same file, and are not consistent about which they refer to it with.  Some applications have actually had different capitalization for a file embedded in different components of the application, as I recall.  It's also said that some of the Adobe apps may to this day have problems with being used on a case-sensitive filesystem.

The advice I've seen is to leave the boot volume alone; but if you want additional or external drives to be case-sensitive, that's up to you.  Indeed, you might almost have to create a second boot volume, copy everything over, and "bless" it or whatever it takes to make it bootable, to get a case-sensitive boot volume.

> 
>> is it worth the risk of breakage to switch (I have seen some
>> in the past that would have broken)? Is it worth the inconvenience
>> of having to enter case correctly
>> (for those not already accustomed to doing that)?
> 
> Well, exactly. I find it a much bigger inconvenience
> that the filename is _not_ what I said.
> 
> No point in moaning about how thing are, I suppose.
> I just didn't know till now. Thanks for the insight.
> 
> 	Jan
> 

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