Specifying file paths

Would it be more efficient to say Unix vs Windows?

Posix

Duel of the fates: \//\

The number of times I had to ask "how can I tell where the file 'physically'" (I know) "lives" on the network when I took up work at a Windows shop, it was just baffling. And Win people couldn't understand what I was asking.

There's a location for this effing thing. I want to know where it is, really! How do I get that info?!

Fun fact, though: Linux is the only case-sensitive one.

Edit: I feel silly for forgetting that it's all about the choice of FS. If anyone needs anything from me, I'll be in the corner, coloring.

From a technical standpoint, the windows NTFS filesystem is designed inherently case sensitive, just windows doesn't allow creating case sensitive files.

Connecting an NTFS drive to linux, you can create two separate files readme.txt and Readme.txt.

Using windows, you can see both files in the filesystem, but chances are most (if not all) software will struggle accessing both files, opening readme.txt might instead open Readme.txt or vice versa.
- You're correct. I once was trying to rename a file in Windows in a git repository that had a wrong capitalization. It was tricky.
- Such a microsoft thing to do.
- For a few years now, Windows has had the capability of marking certain directories as case-sensitive. So you can have a mixed-case-sensitivity filesystem experience now. Yeah. :/
I once ran into a bug in an Arduino program where it wouldn't compile. The author blamed my "broken environment". Turned out, he had included "arduino.h" instead of the correct "Arduino.h".
Although you can use case insensitive filesystems with Linux, and case sensitive filesystems with macOS. I believe the case sensitivity is a function of the specific filesystem --- but yeah, practically, the root for Linux is always case sensitive, and APFS ~~ain't~~ is only if you ask it to be ( https://support.apple.com/lv-lv/guide/disk-utility/dsku19ed921c/mac ).
- When case insensitivity is the default I always wonder how many apps unknowingly rely on that due to typos somewhere. I encountered this once while porting a Windows/macOS app to Linux that someone imported a module with the wrong case and nobody noticed
Least favorite part of linux honestly
- Hard disagree. I don't understand why anyone would want case insensitive.
  
  Am I the only one who doesn't go around mindlessly capitalizing letters? Do people find it too difficult to capitalize things?
  
  Do you want case insensitive passwords too?
  
  If I type X I mean X and only X. Uppercase letters are different letters, just like X and Y are different letters.
- Case-insensitive filesystems are for maniacs. They are only causing trouble. Ever had two folders with the same name but different capitalization in windows? You see both, but whichever you click it will always open the same one, while the other can't be accessed. Psychopath behavior.
- Makes changing the case of a file/folder a lot easier though. Windows you have to rename it to something else then rename it again just to change case but Linux you can just...rename it. It's a small thing but it's something
- You can turn it off, at least for ext4: https://lwn.net/Articles/784041/
As is right and proper.
On MacOS you get a choice when you format the drive.

File systems aren't even real.

What is this "real" concept anyway?

Adam Savage famously stated on Mythbusters "I reject your reality and substitute my own"

Sure, but is reality even real then? Is anything real?

Not that I meant to get all pop-philosophical on this beautiful Sunday morning, sorry about that.
- Yes
  
  Interpretation of reality is individual
  
  Reality itself is relative
  
  But if it didn't exist we wouldn't be chatting about it right now
  
  That's my reality anyway
  
  What's yours?

This meme is way more clever than it should be

Can you please explain? I've never used Mac and it's been a long time since I've properly used windows.
- File paths in Linux and Mac use / while Windows uses \
  
  Take a look at the angle of the lightsabers.
- The lightsaber orientation is the same as the slash orientation
Didn't realize until I read your comment. Thanks.
- It's not something the Jedi would tell you.
- I didn't realise until I read that comment, your comment and the other comment about slash direction.

I hate that I need to use escape characters when creating something for windows.

Python raw strings to the rescue!
- Pathlib is the answer.
- Nobody is stopping you from using forward slashes. Python will translate the path for the current platform.
Try pathlib. All your problems solved.

You can actually use / as a path separator on Windows in functions like fopen(), because it supports some ancient version of POSIX standard.

There used to be an undocumented setting in early versions of MS-DOS that would allow the setting of the command option character to something other than the slash, and if you did that, the slash automatically became the path separator. All you needed was SWITCHAR=- in your CONFIG.SYS and DOS was suddenly very Unix-y.

It was taken out after a while because, with the feature being undocumented, too many people didn't know about it and bits of software - especially batch files, would have been reliant on things being "wrong". The modern support for regular slash in API calls probably doesn't use any of the old SWITCHAR code, but it is, in some way, the spiritual descendant of that secret feature.

Here's an old blog that talks about it: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-gb/archive/blogs/larryosterman/why-is-the-dos-path-character
The one thing about NT was that it didn't have it's own semantics, but it could emulate any system you wanted. It's the unofficial successor of an OS that was based on creating VMs where you could run any other OS you want.

Then Microsoft decided to create their own system in it, and only really finished writing that one.

Also the internet belongs on the left.

And really, Linux/macos could be reduced to "Unix" https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/Unix_history-simple.svg

And BSD. It's really just Windows vs. literally everything. Or is there anything else that uses backslashes?
- CP/M
  
  Which in this context is named hilariously.
- Typical windows behavior
Only Mac OS 10 and later, based on BSD, uses ‘/‘. (And, I guess, A/UX.) Classic MacOS used a ‘:’, but it wasn’t regularly exposed in the UI. The only way most users would know is that the colon couldn’t be used in a file name.
- I might be wrong, but I think you still can't use a ':' in a filename in macOS. If I recall correctly it will let you do it and show it in Finder, but actually replace it with a '-'.
I mean literally… example.com**/**index.html

I don't really watch Star Wars. I'm a more of a Trekkie gal.

🖖

See, you can separate files both ways as long as it's logical

Specifying paths with - would be its own special brand of hell.

If you know what a nordic keyboard layout looks like, you'd probably prefer backslash. Since I moved to Linux a year ago I've been struggling to find the easiest way to forward slash. Shift + 7? Or numpad / with my right pinky?

For me it's even worse. Forward slash is also Shift + 7 and backslash is AltGr + ß?? I hate that computing is only optimized for US american layouts. Going by my keyboard, the filepath separator should probably be an ö.
- The alt gr + ß is probably the same for nordic keyboards, the one below A. It's <>\ for me, but afaik both < and > are also individual keys on a US keyboard. And then there's ~. But I guess you get used to dead keys.
Get a macro pad and configure one button to type a forward slash.

How do you type URLs using that keyboard layout?
- Shift+7 feels wrong for some reason, so I currently tend to just send my pinky on a kamikaze mission towards the numpad hoping I hit /. Sometimes I hit numlock, sometimes I hit *.
  Even if I made a compose key "shortcut" via ~/.XCompose it'd still be more work than what I'm doing already.
  
  Macro pad could be a solution, I have considered it beforehand for other purposes tbh

Both works fine in Windows tho?

Used to not
- Actually, from what I can tell in my brief 15-minute internet search, every version of Windows since NT has accepted both because DOS 2.0 supported both. The exception to this was Command Prompt. But, these days, it supports both. Not sure when they made that change in Command Prompt, but I think it's been that way since at least Windows 7.
- Times change. You used to not be able to run Linux in Windows, but you can do that too.

I don't get it

Linux uses forward slash. Windows uses backslash. Because some dude 45 years ago wanted to make it look different from UNIX.
- I understand pre-OS X Macintoshes used colons.
- Was that bill gates just to make one of the first incompatibilities in a long long run?
The lightsaber direction is like / \
- A whole fight inccharacters:
  / \
  X
  | |
  \ /
  
  /
  X

I love linux like a pet. I love windows like my car. Can we stop with this pointless making a content mountain over any insignificant difference. Don't get me started

Linux is my car and pet at the same time. Does that make it a carpet?
- I just begun hearing "I'm in the house like carpet" inside my head. Thanks Tobyfox on Bluesky!
Look again