Re: [Sml-implementers] compilation management

[Matthias B. <bl...@re...>]

Dave Berry wrote:
> 
> At 17:29 20/09/2001, Daniel C. Wang wrote:
> >The case insensitivity is not just a problem with MacOS X. ...
> 
> I won't argue this point any more, since it's clear that sufficient people
> are sufficiently opposed to a fixed mapping.  I will just note that library
> authors would do well to bear case-insensitivity in mind while choosing
> names for their files.

Yes, this is a good recommendation.

> We could even go so far as to require that no files
> in a given library should be case-insensitive-equal.  Yes, it would be a
> mild restriction on some OS's, but it would help to improve portability.

This I wouldn't do -- not as a requirement that we burn into a language
spec.  The main reason for my saying this is that we should not have to care
about such OS- and filesys-specifics at all.  Otherwise there will be no end
to it:
   - no case-insensitive-equal names
   - no suffixes longer than k chars (k = 3 ?)
   - no filename longer than n chars
   - no filename arc longer than m chars
   - no dots in filenames (other than to indicate the suffix)
   - no whitespace in filenames
   - only ASCII in filenames
   - no special chars in filenames ("/", "\", "*", "?", ...)
   - no ...

It is a slippery slope, and we should not even begin to tread there.

It is _definitely_ a good idea for library authors to keep all of the above in mind.
But at the same time, it should be easy to fix problems that may occur on particular
systems without having to touch ML source code, i.e., by just renaming files and
updating the meta information (= .cm-files in CM jargon).

Matthias