Re: Why does ls command sometimes case sensitively misbehave?

[Igor Pechtchanski <pechtcha at cs dot nyu dot edu>]

On Thu, 15 Aug 2002, Geoffrey Scheller wrote:

> >>>On Thu, 15 Aug 2002, Geoffrey Scheller wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> Why is ls doing this?  Other commands, like vi, also show
> >>>> this behavior:
> >>>>
> >>>>     $ touch foo
> >>>>
> >>>>     $ ls
> >>>>     foo
> >>>>
> >>>>     $ ls foo
> >>>>     foo
> >>>>
> >>>>     $ ls FoO
> >>>>     FoO
> >>>>
> >>>>     $ ls fo*
> >>>>     foo
> >>>>
> >>>>     $ ls Fo*
> >>>>     ls: Fo*: No such file or directory
> >>>>
> >>>> $ bash --version
> >>>> GNU bash, version 2.05b.0(2)-release (i686-pc-cygwin)
> >>>> Copyright (C) 2002 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
> >>>>
> >>>> Cygwin DLL version 1.3.12-2
> >>>>
> >>>> I run Cygwin on Windows XP Professional.
> >>>>
> >>>> Thanks,
> >>>> Geoffrey
> >>>
> >>>What you're seeing is the behavior of the shell's filename globbing, not
> >>>of ls or vi.  What is the value of your CYGWIN environment variable? Does
> >>>it contain "check_case:<smth>"?  Does it contain "glob" or "noglob"
> >>>(although that, IIRC, is only for command shell windows)?  What are the
> >>>options of bash itself (`set | grep SHELLOPTS`)?
> >>>    Igor
> >>
> >> $ shopt nocaseglob
> >> nocaseglob      off
> >>
> >> At first that is what I thought, but
> >>
> >>     $ ls
> >>     foo
> >>
> >>     $ ls 'Foo'
> >>     Foo
> >>
> >> I think shell globbing is OK.
> >>
> >>     $ echo 'FoO' fo* FoO*
> >>     FoO foo FoO*
> >>
> >> Problem still there whether or not I have turned on case sensitive globbing.
> >>     $ shopt -s nocaseglob
> >>
> >>     $ echo 'FoO' fo* FoO*
> >>     FoO foo foo
> >>
> >>     $ ls FoO
> >>     FoO
> >>
> >> I think it is a little bit subtler.
> >>
> >> Geoffrey
> >
> >Did you try it under other shells (sh, ksh, tcsh)?  Did you try it under
> >the command prompt?  And what is the value of your CYGWIN environment
> >variable?  I think you might have a "check_case:adjust" in there...
> >       Igor
>
>     $ set | grep SHELLOPTS
>     SHELLOPTS=braceexpand:hashall:histexpand:interactive-comments:monito
>
> Also, CYGWIN environment variable not defined (Sorry I missed this on
> previous thread).
>     $env | grep CYGWIN
>
> Same behavior under sh and tcsh.  Don't have ash or ksh installed.  Also
> same behavior when under command.com:
>
>     $ C:\CYGWIN\HOME\GEOFFREY\TEST>\cygwin\bin\ls FoO
>     FoO
>
> Actually dir gets the name right.  (First time I ever saw dir do something
> better than ls)
>
>     C:\cygwin\home\Geoffrey\Test>dir FoO
>     Volume in drive C has no label
>     Volume Serial Number is 3C08-4BE4
>
>     Directory of C:\cygwin\home\Geoffrey\Test
>
>     08/15/2002  06:35 PM                 0 foo
>                1 File(s)              0 bytes
>                0 Dir(s)   4,451,311,616 bytes free
>
> This is not a show stopper, but is irksome if I have a C and C++ by the same
> name like bar.c and bar.C.  Thanks for your help.
>
> What is the behavior on other peoples Cygwin systems?
>
> Geoffrey

First off, Windows systems are generally case-insensitive, and thus the
files bar.c and bar.C would be considered the same file.  Unless you've
turned off filename case insensitivity (and I don't remember how to do it,
but there was a thread in the archives to that regard, with something
about POSIX compliance, IIRC), the two names will clash, and

# echo 'lowercase' >bar.c
# echo 'uppercase' >bar.C

will produce one file with 'uppercase' in it (not sure about the name, I
think lowercase, but that's easily verifiable).

Secondly, if you want more control over how filenames are treated, set
the check_case option in your CYGWIN environment variable.  The detailed
description is in the cygwin user's guide.
	Igor
P.S. I usually set mine to check_case:strict precisely because I have a
case-insensitive file system.  This prevents writing to bar.C if bar.c
exists, or opening bar.c as bar.C, but doesn't allow you to have both
simultaneously (see above).
-- 
				http://cs.nyu.edu/~pechtcha/
      |\      _,,,---,,_		pechtcha@cs.nyu.edu
ZZZzz /,`.-'`'    -.  ;-;;,_		igor@watson.ibm.com
     |,4-  ) )-,_. ,\ (  `'-'		Igor Pechtchanski
    '---''(_/--'  `-'\_) fL	a.k.a JaguaR-R-R-r-r-r-.-.-.  Meow!

It took the computational power of three Commodore 64s to fly to the moon.
It takes a 486 to run Windows 95.  Something is wrong here. -- SC sig file


--
Unsubscribe info:      http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple
Bug reporting:         http://cygwin.com/bugs.html
Documentation:         http://cygwin.com/docs.html
FAQ:                   http://cygwin.com/faq/