I thought Linux was case-sensitive?

Daravon · 05-24-2012, 06:07 PM

I have had this happen to me a couple times, though.

Code:

chaz@optimus:/media/CHAZFLASHDR$ mv TelTempControl.pdf telTempControl.pdf
mv: `TelTempControl.pdf' and `telTempControl.pdf' are the same file

Excuse me? Why does this happen? Is it a bug in gnu mv's regex?

TobiSGD · 05-24-2012, 06:15 PM

I just created a file named TelTempControl.pdf and tried your command, works fine here. May it be possible that the file resides on a partition with a filesystem that is not case-sensitive?

Daravon · 05-24-2012, 06:19 PM

It was on a flash drive.

TobiSGD · 05-24-2012, 06:31 PM

The type of drive tells us nothing about the file-system. Was it possibly formatted as FAT16/32? This filesystem is not case-sensitive, so Linux is not able to execute operations on it that need case-sensitivity.

chrism01 · 05-24-2012, 09:07 PM

My reaction exactly as per TobiSGD

sundialsvcs · 05-24-2012, 10:36 PM

File systems are (or are not...) case-sensitive.

Flash-drives are customarily initialized with FAT32, which is a case-insensitive file system. Linux, of course, understands this perfectly, and behaves appropriately.

(Incidentally: Windows is no slouch on this department, either. It, too, has "installable file system" (IFS) support, although FAT and NTFS are the only drivers that are installed by default.)

Daravon · 05-25-2012, 10:53 AM

So, is there a better file system to use for flash drives?

TobiSGD · 05-25-2012, 11:01 AM

If you want to use that device with Windows (Windows 2000 and later) machines also then NTFS is the way to go, otherwise I would use ext2/3/4 for it.