Re: Path-related asserts

Hi Daniel,

Nope, it's not a dead horse - just a very esoteric one. :-)

I'm concluding that the best way to specify case sensitivity
is to specify it directly on the call, rather than using the
OS name as a standin. And I agree that the default should
be non-case-sensitive unless we learn more.

It would be interesting to see what happens in Mono when accessing
an NT file system as well.

Charlie 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email protected] 
> [mailto:[email protected]] On 
> Behalf Of Daniel M. Pomerantz
> Sent: Thursday, February 21, 2008 2:37 PM
> To: Charlie Poole
> Cc: [email protected]
> Subject: Re: [nunit-developer] Path-related asserts
> 
> To continue down the path (no pun intended) of case 
> sensitivity in paths in .Net, I came across the following 
> while doing some work for my job.  
> Thought it applied and should be shared:
> 
> In the .Net 2.0 and 3.5 MSDN documentations, I found the 
> following blurb related to System.IO.Directory.Exists(string 
> path) and System.IO.Directory.Delete(string path):
> 
> "The path parameter is not case-sensitive."
> 
> System.IO.Directory.CreateDirectory(string path), 
> System.IO.File.Create, System.IO.File.Exists, and 
> System.IO.File.Delete have no such blurb in their 
> documentation.  This leads me to believe that Microsoft 
> envisioned .Net to always be case preserving on the creation 
> of directories, but always case insensitive in working with 
> directories.....which leaves me to believe that as per the 
> documentation, the path / directory asserts that we have 
> discussed should always be case-insensitive regardless of the 
> OS or the FS in play.  Please note that I am not saying that 
> I agree with this implementation, but to me, documentation is gospel.
> 
> I am curious for how this is implemented on OSes and FSes 
> which are case sensitive.  When running mono on a linux box, 
> accessing an ext3 fs, if the directories /etc/foo/bar and 
> /etc/FOO exist, what what will be the result of calling 
> Directory.Exists("/etc/FOO/bar")?  What will happen if some 
> one calls "Directory.Delete("/etc/foo", true)" ?  I feel that 
> this needs to be resolved...by the mono team.
> 
> This is all made even more complicated by the fact that File 
> doesn't have the blurb, and paths are a completely different 
> animal:  Directory and File are meant to actually interact 
> with a FS, and Path is all intended to be theoretical.  In 
> looking at the documentation for Path a bit closer, I found 
> no case specific data, but did find the following:  
> "Because all these operations are performed on strings, it is 
> impossible to verify that the results are valid in all scenarios."
> 
> My (hopefully final) thoughts on the matter:
> 
> This should be clarified with Microsoft.  The documentation 
> and intent 
> in this area is not clear:   Are all or no paths case sensitive?
> 
> NUnit should pick a standard and use it throughout.  The 
> objects at the heart of this appear to either be ambiguous or 
> documented as case insensitive.  That leads me to believe 
> that the best way to adhere to the documentation is to be 
> case insensitive.
> 
> If NUnit wishes to have an option, I can understand, but the 
> default behaviour of the framework (case in-sensitivity) 
> should be the default behaviour of the Asserts. 
> 
> Sorry if these appears to be beating a dead horse or 
> repeating already stated opinions, I just thought that this 
> shed a new light on the matter.
> 
> dmp
> 
> 
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