[Python-Dev] os.path.normcase rationale? (original) (raw)

Paul Moore p.f.moore at gmail.com
Sat Sep 25 12:47:28 CEST 2010

On 24 September 2010 23:43, Glenn Linderman <v+python at g.nevcal.com> wrote:

Hmm.  There is no need for the function on a case sensitive file system, because the name had better be spelled with matching case: that is, if it is spelled with non-matching case it is an attempt to reference a non-existent file (or at least a different file).

On Linux, I don't believe there's a way to ask "is this filesystem case insensitive?"

In fact, with userfs, I believe it's possible to do massively pathological things like having a filesystem which treats anagrams as the same file (foo is the same file as oof or ofo). (More realistically, MacOS does Unicode normalisation).

Windows has (I believe) user definable filesystems, too, but the OS has "get me the real filename" style calls, which the filesystem should support, so no matter how nasty a filesystem implementer gets, he has to deal with his own mess :-)

Paul.

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