Re: Bug Emacs 21.3: write-file downcasing

[storm@cua.dk (Kim F. Storm)]

Jason Rumney <jasonr@gnu.org> writes:

> Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:
> 
> > That adds to the weight of the need.  Still, I would much rather
> > we could avoid the need to compare file names using anything other
> > than string=.
> 
> Even on GNU and similar systems, it is probably better to compare
> inodes than strings to determine if two files are the same file.
> That would deal with case-insensitive filesystems where they exist on
> those platforms.
> 
> There are already places in the Emacs code where inodes are used (to
> deal with hard-links), making a function available for lisp to do
> such a comparison and encouraging people to use it rather than string=
> seems like a good thing to me.

So there are really two issues here when comparing two file names A and B:

1) do A and B name the same file  (could be in different directories)
 
2) are A and B the "same" file name, if underlaying FS is case insensitive.

In case 1), comparing inodes (when available) will be the correct solution.

In case 2), just comparing inodes doesn't help.


Furthermore, if the file hasn't been created yet, you cannot use inodes to
compare names A and B...

-- 
Kim F. Storm <storm@cua.dk> http://www.cua.dk