Technically it's a *FAT filesystem thing, and it still carries over into default Windows behaviour today. If I remember correctly, you have to explicitly tell Windows to distinguish between case in filenames, even on NTFS, which otherwise supports it... and then hope that something in the system wasn't relying on case-insensitivity, which is now broken.
I have a few exFAT-formatted USB thumb drives and I find that Linux (an OS that has been case sensitive, or at least, its filesystems have, since the outset) complains that the filename is already in use when renaming files to lower case versions of themselves on those drives. I generally have to rename to something different (maybe add a letter) and then rename back. The case can be changed at either stage, but the intermediate name has to be different.
blackbeans@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
Long filenames were introduced in Windows 95. It was done by means of an extension to the filesystem (VFAT). The long filenames were preserved when you copied it to another computer but didn’t show up when you used older DOS versions.
cypherpunks@lemmy.ml 1 day ago
MICROS~1JasonDJ@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
C:\PROGRA~1xylol@leminal.space 1 day ago
This looks like what teams does to any lengthy URL which breaks it
ChicoSuave@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I wonder if that’s why computers started using longer words and phrases for programs. The grumpy old man that lives in my in head gets ranting during these moments.
“Back in my day all we had were short names like startup, system, and exit. Now it’s all control panel, system settings, hardware managers. And apps! They’re called them executables!”