Yesterday, I began to transfer my git configuration from my old machine to my new MacBook Pro. When I renamed my file by doing this, an error has occurred to me:
$ git mv readme Readme
fatal: destination exists, source=readme, destination=ReadmeIt seems like my Mac OS X cannot recognize Readme file as same as readme file. So I had to convert readme file to tmp_file and then tmp_file to Readme file. In Linux, this command can work very well, but in Mac OS X, failed. This is the first time that I realized case-sensitive is so important. Except for this situation, I believe it is hazardous when keep confusing the case.
Different operating systems (OS) have different case-sensitive level, that is why the same command upon can work well on Linux but fail on Mac OS X.
- case-sensitive OS: Linux, Solaris, BSD
- case-insensitive OS: Windows, Mac OS X
In my working pipeline, my file often transfers between Linux and Mac OS X, so I decided to convert all my filename under lowercase_with_underscore principle. The reasons behind this principle are:
- Easy to read, UPPERCASE_WITH_UNDERSCORE is hard to understand
- Easy to distinguish a private file from system folder/file such as
Documents,Downloadsand so on - Transfer file with lower risk (Every OSs can recognize your file correctly)
- I love the underscore sign