[R-SIG-Mac] Case distinction on a Mac.

[Timothy Bates]

Dear Rolf,
By default, the file system is not case-sensitive.
So the answer to file.exists(".Rdata") is  correct. And you won't be  
able to write .RData without overwriting .Rdata

You can format a drive with a case-sensitive file system if you wish  
(Spotlight:Disk Utility), but many applications won't be happy to find  
folders containing files with the same (insensitive) name inside.

tim

On 19 Feb 2009, at 11:47 PM, Rolf Turner wrote:

>
> I have noticed that OS X sometimes fails to make a case distinction in
> the names of files.  E.g. if I have a file ``junk'' and I try to  
> create
> a directory using ``mkdir Junk'' it will refuse to do so saying  
> ``file exists''.
>
> Likewise I have just noticed that in R
>
> 	file.exists(".Rdata")
>
> returns TRUE when no file .Rdata exists (but there *is* a  
> file .RData).
>
> This strikes me as an undesirable, uh, feature.  Is there any way that
> I can tell OS X to smarten up about this?