Re: find-library-name fails if file (with no extension) exists.

[David Kastrup]

Lennart Borgman <address@hidden> writes:

> David Kastrup wrote:
>
>> It is not even possible to write code with a reasonable chance of
>> working reliably since one can have Windows and Unix file systems on
>> the same system and export either with Samba or NFS or a number of
>> other ways.
>
> If (a very big IF perhaps) Samba, NFS etc preserves the case of file
> names in each export and the software is written with the possibility
> of both case sensitive and case insensitive file systems in mind it
> seems possible to me.
>
> Or am I missing something there?

You can't decide that two file names might indicate the same file
without doing an actual file operation.  You can't decide whether
writing a file would conflict with an existing file without actually
doing the write (and asking the operating system to fail in case the
file exists).  You can't really base any decision on existing file
names.  As a rule of thumb, if there is a possibility for a race
condition, there is a possibility for filename aliasing trouble.  And
not every potential race condition is a problem.

Things like file name completion are simply something which is
impossible to get right.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum