filename and normalization (was gcc identifiers)

[Jungshik Shin <jshin@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 3 Dec 2002, H. Peter Anvin wrote:

> By author:    Jungshik Shin <jshin@xxxxxxxxxxx>

> >  The same is true here. Although Unix file system has few
> > restrictions on file/dir names, it needs to have a provision to specify
> > how to deal with multiple representations of equivalent characters. Is
> > there anything mentioned about this in SUS?
>
> Yes.  Filenames are byte sequences, period, full stop.  Any attempt at
> normalization would violate SUS/POSIX.

  All right. That's what the *current* SUS/POSIX says. However, that
is hardly a solace to a user who'd be puzzled that two visually
identical and cannonically equivalent filenames are treated differently.
For instance, U+00D6(Latin Capital Letter O with diaresis) should look
identical and be treated identically with U+004F foll. by U+0308. That's
what users expect.  I don't know what's the best way to resolve
this conflict. It may be time to consider seriously this particular
aspect of SUS/POSIX.  I'm wondering how MacOS X (well, it's not 100%
SUS/POSIX compliant, but nonetheless it's Unix) works in this area. It
uses NFD. That is, 'U+00D6' is stored as 'U+004F U+0308' and both are
treated idnetically.

  Jungshik

--
Linux-UTF8:   i18n of Linux on all levels
Archive:      http://mail.nl.linux.org/linux-utf8/