file name case issue on fat32 (Was: Re: Sharing data files on a dual-boot machine ...)

RW list-freebsd-2004 at morbius.sent.com
Tue Sep 27 07:32:43 PDT 2005


On Tuesday 27 September 2005 15:15, Micah wrote:

> > ps: and, btw, how freebsd knows there's a capital A in "A.txt~" ?
> > because it's stored on the filesystem in that way, i guess. being
> > case-insensitive doesn't (necessarily)  mean a FS doesn't keep a case,
> > imho.
>
> The reason is as follows: a.txt is an 8.3 filename and is stored on
> fat32 in the old dos format.  a.txt~ is NOT an 8.3 filename and is
> stored on fat32 in the extended long filename format.  Case information
> is not stored in 8.3's file names.  They're always the same case, but I
> can't remember now if they're stored as upper or lower case.  Extended
> long filenames do store case information, even though windows ignores
> the case (as was pointed out earlier).  FreeBSD is displaying 8.3 names
> as lowercase probably to mimic the tendency of unix filenames to be
> lowercase.  Windows displays 8.3 names as upper case probably to mimic dos.


The 8.3 names and the long names are stored separately whatever the name 
format.  FreeBSD  displays the long name even when the filename fits the 8.3 
format.   


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