Re: coreutils-5.96 bug report

[Paul Eggert]

I tracked the problem down to the following test in
tests/readlink/can-e:

  v=`readlink -e ${p}regfile` || break
  test "$v" = "$my_pwd/$tmp/regfile" || break

Given the transcript you sent me privately, that last command turned
out to be equivalent to the following:

  test 
/Users/robingene/desktop/coreutils-5.96/tests/readlink/can-e.tmp/17775/regfile \
     = 
/Users/robingene/Desktop/coreutils-5.96/tests/readlink/can-e.tmp/17775/regfile

The two file names differ: one says "desktop" while the other says
"Desktop".  There are similar problems in can-f and can-m.

Since you are using Darwin, I surmise that you're running the test on
an HFS or HFS+ file system, where accessing files by name is a case
insensitive process.  The obvious workaround would be to run "make
check" in a UFS file system, since UFS is case sensitive.

The first file name came from "readlink -e", the second from "pwd".
I don't know why the two names would disagree on an HFSish file
system; perhaps someone with some old MacOS expertise (not me!) can
chime in.

Thanks for reporting the bug.  Could you please try "make -k check"
to see if there are any more like it?

However, I don't think this bug indicates a serious problem with
coreutils; it's just the usual MacOS glitch with file name case
sensitivity.