Re: loaddefs.el filenames as seen by `update-file-autoloads'

[Thien-Thi Nguyen]

   From: "Stefan Monnier" <monnier+gnu/address@hidden>
   Date: Mon, 12 May 2003 21:14:13 -0400

   Under W32, the file-system preserves the capitalization, even though
   it ignores it when searching for files.  I.e. you can't have both "Foo"
   and "FOO", but after creating "Foo", an application can know whether
   the file was created as "Foo" or "foo" or "FOO".

   If `directory-files' *can* properly return ("ChangeLog" "README"
   "configure"), rather than ("changelog" "readme" "configure") or
   ("CHANGELOG" "README" "CONFIGURE"), without having to read the user's
   mind (and without performance cost) then I think it should.

ok, i see what you mean.  i see that `readdir' for vms (in sysdep.c)
does no case translation, and stepping through that function a few times
in the debugger shows the filename to be upcased from the beginning.  it
looks like vms that i am using follows the last of the three models
above.

   Why do you need to upcase in expand-file-name ?
   Isn't VMS happy either way ?

i don't know if it's necessary; perhaps for consistency?  after a while,
the "vms mindset" of upcase filenames is not as disturbing as initially.
what is more disturbing is the case folding for dcl command procedure
arguments, necessitating quoting, which has its own share of freaky and
baroque idiosyncrasies, but i digress...

   update-file-autoloads is not used exclusievly for lisp/loaddefs.el:
   it is also used by some outside elisp packages.  Admittedly, they
   probably also use lowercase filenames.

yeah, i have some familiarity from use in ttn-pers-elisp, although this
is the first time i've looked at the case issue.

   >   (expand-file-name "foo.el") => "AXPA:[TTN.EMACS.EMACS212_3]FOO.EL"

   Since VMS is case-insensitive, it would work just as well if
   expand-file-name returned "AXPA:[TTN.EMACS.EMACS212_3]FOO.EL".

i presume you mean "axpa:[ttn.emacs.emacs212_3]foo.el", as currently
`expand-file-name' does indeed upcase.

thi