changing a Makefile based on user input

[Charles Swiger]

On Aug 5, 2004, at 2:58 PM, Oliver Eikemeier wrote:
>> Requiring case-sensitive filenames is not a good idea if you can 
>> choose otherwise.  There are lots of filesystems (ISO-9660, HFS+, 
>> CIFS) which can't distinguish between a directory called "rtfm" and 
>> one called "RTFM", some of which are even used by people running 
>> FreeBSD.  :-)
>
> Standard Mac OS Extended (aka HFS+) can distinguish between a 
> directory called "rtfm" and one called "RTFM", since is 
> case-preserving.  It is not case-sensitive though, so both can't 
> coexist. Otherwise I agree with your comment.

HFS+ is case-preserving, but the internal B-tree data structures 
mandate that filenames be compared and sorted in a case-insensitive 
fashion.  See:

http://developer.apple.com/technotes/tn/tn1150.html

"HFS Plus stores strings fully decomposed and in canonical order.  HFS 
Plus compares strings in a case-insensitive fashion.  Strings may 
contain Unicode characters that must  be ignored by this comparison.  
For more details on these subtleties, see Unicode  Subtleties."

[ Remember the debate about wether to enable or disable write-caching 
on IDE hard drives, a while back?  The former NeXT mailing lists which 
became OSX-related had a similar extended argument about UFS versus 
HFS+ filesystem semantics.  I have learned this area with some 
precision.  :-) ]

-- 
-Chuck