logoalt Hacker News

hn993302yesterday at 8:15 PM1 replyview on HN

Sometimes you download stuff that relies on case sensitivity. Anyone who's dealt with this probably has a sensitive RW DMG lying around for this reason. But macOS FSes default to case-insensitive, so random issues come up if you make your root sensitive (famously in Adobe software). Damned if you do or don't.

Another weird thing in macOS:

  $ mkdir Cased
  $ cd cased
  $ pwd
  /Users/me/Downloads/cased
  $ cd ../Cased && pwd
  /Users/me/Downloads/Cased
So yeah I wish the FS defaulted to sensitive, even though I never rely on that. Not its job to normalize names.

Replies

rcyehtoday at 1:37 AM

TIL that MacOS `pwd` has `-P` and `-L` options.

     -L      Display the logical current working directory.
     -P      Display the physical current working directory (all symbolic links resolved).
     If no options are specified, the -L option is assumed.
In your example, using `-P` will show `Cased`.