Re: Naming convention request--Please allow for case insensitive file system

From: Christian Holm Christensen (cholm@hehi03.nbi.dk)
Date: Tue Aug 27 2002 - 10:05:51 EDT

  • Next message: Kris Hagel: "Re: Naming convention request--Please allow for case insensitive file system"

    Hi Steve, 
    
    On Tue, 27 Aug 2002 08:34:51 -0500
    Stephen Sanders <ssanders@ku.edu> wrote
    concerning "Re: Naming convention request--Please allow for case insensitive file system":
    > Mac OSX is UNIX but, 
    
    Not really, see below. 
    
    > alas, Steve Jobs figured case sensitivity would confuse the
    > masses...
    
    Don't you just love it when people make these unilateral decisions for
    you?  
    
    > On Monday, August 26, 2002, at 06:26 PM, Flemming Videbaek wrote:
    > 
    > >> Hi,
    > >> I'm working on getting brat running under Mac OSX.  So far I have
    > >> ROOT running fine
    
    Did you need some special tricks?  If so, could you summarise them on
    some WWW-page? Thanks. 
    
    > >> and brat half-running; brat compiles fine, but seems to have
    > >> trouble with accessing the compiled headers.
    
    Compiled headers?  We do not compile headers.  CINT has this odd idea
    of `precompiled headers' - like with MSVC - which I must confese I
    don't truely understand.  Could you give a bit more info? thanks. 
    
    > >> In any case, I would like to request that the brat developers avoid
    > >> introducing classes  whose names are only distinguished by
    > >> letter case. 
    > >
    > >  Mac OSX does not have a case sensitive file system.
    
    One should not only avoid that kind of naming for the sake of wierd
    OS's with no case-sensitivity, like Mac OSX and Windoze, but also
    because it's bad form.  Imagine talking to someone, saying `I was
    using the "b r f s tracking module" ...!' It could be anyone of the
    two.  
    
    Namespaces (similar to Java packages) would be a great solution to
    this mess (and long class names too): 
    
      namespace Brat { 
        namespace Modules {
          namespace Fs { 
    
            class Tracking { ... }
          }
        }
      }
    
         
    And you'd use it like 
    
      Brat::Modules::Fs::Traking* fstracking = 
        new Brat::Modules::Fs::Traking
    
    or 
    
      use namespace Brat; 
    
      Modules::Fs::Traking* fstracking = 
        new Modules::Fs::Traking
    
    and so on.  Really nice way of packaging (Java jargon) stuff together
    in logical bunches. 
    
    > > I am sure this is right but I though this was a unix system - O
    > > well. 
    
    So did I.  Heck, there commercials say so (they brag about `/dev/null'
    :-) 
    
    Infact, MacOSX is not really a Unix.  It's a FreeBSD layer on a Mach
    kernel.  What that means is that the kernel is really a microkernel,
    while a Unix kernel is a monolithic kernel (see the
    Torvalds/Thanembaum discussion).  The FreeBSD layer (a translator, and
    the only one) is just there to make a POSIX interface for the
    applications.  I have no idea wether POSIX says anything about
    significans of case for filenames (my naiive guess is that it does,
    and that it says that case does matter, which would exclude MacOSX
    from being called a Unix proper).
    
    
    > > The files and classes is question BrFSTra.. is a leftover from the 
    > > Sonata program that did all the design tracking etc. It is in
    > > principle  good algortihm for doing the tracking but has de facto
    > > been overridden by the BrFs.. etc. 
    
    If the BrFSTrackingModule is superiour to the BrFsTracking module, or
    even just as good , why isn't it being maintained and integrated
    properly via parallel inheritance to BrFsTrackingModule? 
    
    > > It would in fact not even work. My suggestion would be if Kris
    > > concure to delect this class from the directory- this should help
    > > the Mac setup and do not caise any other problem.
    
    Other than we may loose a potentially good piece of software!  (Well,
    it's still in the CVS, so it's not entirely lost, but you get the
    point.) 
    
    Yours, 
    
     ____ |  Christian Holm Christensen 
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