[Python-Dev] Case-sensitive import

[Steven D. Majewski]

On Tue, 27 Feb 2001, Tim Peters wrote:

> I don't like the new MatchFilename, because it triggers on *all* platforms
> that #define HAVE_DIRENT_H.

I mentioned this when I originally submitted the patch. 
The intent was that it be *able* to compile on any unix-like platform --
in particular, I was thinking LinuxPPC was the other case I could 
think of where someone might want to use a HFS+ filesystem - but
that Darwin/MacOSX was likely to be the only system in which that was
the default. 

> Anyone, doesn't that trigger on straight Linux systems too (all I know is
> that it's part of the Single UNIX Specification)?

Yes. Barry added the _DIRENT_HAVE_D_NAMELINE to handle a difference in
the linux dirent structs. ( I'm not sure if he caught my initial 
statement of intent either, but then the discussion veered into whether
the patch should have been accepted at all, and then into the discussion
of a general solution... )  

I'm not happy with the ineffeciency either, but, as I noted, I didn't
expect that it would be enabled by default elsewhere when I submitted 
it. ( And my goal for OSX was just to have a version that builds and
doesn't crash much, so searching for a more effecient solution was 
going to be the next project. )  

> Would rather dump MatchFilename and rewrite in terms of the old check_case
> (which should run much quicker, and already comes in several appropriate
> platform-aware versions -- and I clearly minimize the chance of breakage if I
> stick to that time-tested code).

The reason I started from scratch, you might recall, was that before I
understood that the Windows semantics was intended to be different, I
tried adding a Mac version of check_case, and it didn't do what I wanted.  
But that wasn't a problem with any of the existing check_case functions,
but was due to how check_case was used.

> Steven, there is a "#ifdef macintosh" version of check_case already.  Will
> that or won't that work correctly on your variant of Mac?  If not, would you
> please supply a version that does (along with the #ifdef'ery needed to
> recognize your Mac variant)?

 One problem is that I'm aiming for a version that would work on both 
the open source Darwin distribution ( which is mach + BSD + some Apple
extensions: Objective-C, CoreFoundation, Frameworks, ... but not most
of the macosx Carbon and Cocoa libraries. ) and the full MacOSX. 
Thus the reason for a unix only implementation -- the info may be 
more easily available via MacOS FSSpec's but that's not available
on vanilla Darwin. ( And I can't, for the life of me, thing of an
effecient unix implementation -- UNIX file system API's + HFS+ filesystem
semantics may be an unfortunate mixture! )   
 In other words: I can rename the current version to  check_case and
fix the args to match. (Although, I recall that the args to check_case
were rather more awkward to handle, but I'll have to look again. )  

 It also probably shouldn't be "#ifdef macintosh" either, but that's
 a thread in itself! 
  

> Steven and Jack, does getenv() work on both your flavors of Mac?  I want to
> make PYTHONCASEOK work for you too.

getenv() works on OSX (it's the BSD unix implementation).  
( I *think* that Jack has the MacPython get the variables from Pythoprefs 
  file settings. ) 

-- Steve Majewski