Linux NTFS Driver Preparing "nocase" Case-Insensitive Mount Option

[dragon321]

THe NTFS volume will be mounted on a Linux system. And then I can use Linux tools (for both GUI and CLI) to operate on it.

I'm not talking about installing Linux on it. I'm talking about what would happen when operating on an NTFS volume, mounted with the case-insensitive option on Linux, using Linux tools.

Why Linux tools would have problems with case insensitive file system? Linux tools in most cases don't care if file system is case sensitive or not. In very simple words if some tool want to open file then it simply asks file system for file with some name and it doesn't care how file system will find file with that name. So most tools won't be affected by that change at all. Of course unless for some reason the need to have files with same name but different cases but I don't think that many tools relies on that functionality. Linux most popular file system (ext4) can be case insensitive and as far I know Linux can work on case insensitive file system without major issues.

Actually it's much easier to go from case sensitive to case insensitive than the other way around.

[ryao]

That would be completely unrealistic at this point, decades worth of code inconsistencies where people used capitalization in one place and lowercase in another, not just in windows but all over the place. It would be a nightmare to port for fairly little gain.

Windows actually does support case sensitivity:

https://www.howtogeek.com/354220/how-to-enable-case-sensitive-folders-on-windows-10/

[microchip8]

In this scenario both should stick.

No they won't in case of Case sensibility. You cannnot have both foo.txt and Foo.txt in the same folder. This is only possible in *case INSENSIITIVY* file systems.

[Damnshock]

No they won't in case of Case sensibility. You cannnot have both foo.txt and Foo.txt in the same folder. This is only possible in *case INSENSIITIVY* file systems.

I think you have the concepts backwards. From the wikipedia

In computers, case sensitivity defines whether uppercase and lowercase letters are treated as distinct (case-sensitive) or equivalent (case-insensitive)

[microchip8]

I think you have the concepts backwards. From the wikipedia

I think you're right. Too much Whiskey on friday?

To sum it up:

Case Sensitive: "foo.txt and Foo.txt": no problem in the same folder
Case Insensitive: "foo.txt and Foo.txt": no-go in same folder, one will overwrite the other.

[andrebrait]

Why Linux tools would have problems with case insensitive file system? Linux tools in most cases don't care if file system is case sensitive or not. In very simple words if some tool want to open file then it simply asks file system for file with some name and it doesn't care how file system will find file with that name. So most tools won't be affected by that change at all. Of course unless for some reason the need to have files with same name but different cases but I don't think that many tools relies on that functionality. Linux most popular file system (ext4) can be case insensitive and as far I know Linux can work on case insensitive file system without major issues.

Actually it's much easier to go from case sensitive to case insensitive than the other way around.

Well, that was exactly what I had in mind. No idea why it would break, but if one thing computers told me is that many things aren't as straightforward as they seem.

For example, a tool that expects to be able to write files whose names use different sets of characters that may coincidentally be the same but with a case changed will fail royally on a case-insensitive FS (or an FS that *can* be case-sensitive but is mounted as case-insensitive)

[middy]

I run into this issue of case sensitivity a lot with dealing with mods for both Skyrim and Fallout New Vegas and 4. Since most modders are on windows they don't care at all about the case sensitivity. I've had mods that touched the same file / folder with one named NVDLC04 while the other was nVdLC04. Like why. One nice thing about making the filesystem be case sensitive is that is forces users to name their stuff sanely and not mess around with odd naming schemes like that.

[stormcrow]

I run into this issue of case sensitivity a lot with dealing with mods for both Skyrim and Fallout New Vegas and 4. Since most modders are on windows they don't care at all about the case sensitivity. I've had mods that touched the same file / folder with one named NVDLC04 while the other was nVdLC04. Like why. One nice thing about making the filesystem be case sensitive is that is forces users to name their stuff sanely and not mess around with odd naming schemes like that.

It doesn't 'force' anything. People that are blythely unaware of case sensitivity will remain so even in environments where it matters. It causes more headaches when people don't follow the logic of why computers understand that "foo.txt" and "Foo.txt" aren't the same, while the average person will tell you they are the same thing because we don't normally think in that same ultra-literal way. Microsoft understood that the average person doesn't care about ASCII tables and that 'x' and 'X' aren't the same to a computer so they made their OS ignore case conventions other OSes required (and were even more awful at UX than MSDOS).

At some point a computer has to interact with humans. Humans expect certain logic (including intuitive context) to apply to the Way Things Are. Computers violate the Way Things Are (and UX) by not understanding that Foo.txt should be the same as foo.txt. Frankly, the problem isn't this particular convention, it's that Unix and other OSes were designed for engineers who could make those mental shims and keep them while the average person finds it stupid.

Edit to add: Apple & MacOS does the same thing. They also realize that the UX of case sensitivity is suboptimal for the average user so their systems have the options of explicity creating filesystems with or without case sensitivity.

[middy]

It doesn't 'force' anything. People that are blythely unaware of case sensitivity will remain so even in environments where it matters. It causes more headaches when people don't follow the logic of why computers understand that "foo.txt" and "Foo.txt" aren't the same, while the average person will tell you they are the same thing because we don't normally think in that same ultra-literal way. Microsoft understood that the average person doesn't care about ASCII tables and that 'x' and 'X' aren't the same to a computer so they made their OS ignore case conventions other OSes required (and were even more awful at UX than MSDOS).

At some point a computer has to interact with humans. Humans expect certain logic to apply to the Way Things Are. Computers violate the Way Things Are (and UX) by not understanding that Foo.txt should be the same as foo.txt. Frankly, the problem isn't this particular convention, it's that Unix and other OSes were designed for engineers who could make those mental shims and keep them while the average person finds it stupid.

when they sit there wondering why they have two folders called foo and fOo when all they want is "FOO" it does force them when they go to "fix it." they realize, foo and fOo are treated differently and start paying attention to their formatting because they don't want "duplicates." they start formatting things one way for they don't have to run into this "issues."

i understand your "average user" argument but from an overall formatting etiquette, forcing case sensitivity does help overtime keep files named sanely or at least follow a common formatting pattern overtime. allowing insensitivity allows people to do a lot of bizarre formatting. go back to my modding example, you can have ten variations of "NVDLC04" while with linux users you can easily bet most will probably just have it written as "nvdlc04" simply because its easier and don't want to worry about variations.

[DanaG]

I run into this issue of case sensitivity a lot with dealing with mods for both Skyrim and Fallout New Vegas and 4. Since most modders are on windows they don't care at all about the case sensitivity.

I don't remember what the extension was, but there was some Chrome extension that failed to install on Linux because the manifest (or whatever it's called) specified, say, foo.js, but the file that actually existed was Foo.js. So installing the extension on Linux would fail with a "file not found" sort of error.