File Systems

POSIX Compliance

If you want POSIX compliance, you must use NTFS. POSIX compliance permits UNIX programs to be ported to Windows 2000. Windows 2000 is fully compliant with the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) standard 1003.1, which is a standard for file naming and identification.

The following POSIX-compliant features are included in NTFS:

Case-sensitive naming. For example, POSIX would interpret README.TXT, Readme.txt, and readme.txt as different files.
Hard links. A file can be given more than one name. This allows two different file names, which can be located in different folders, to point to the same data.
Additional time stamps. These show when the file was last accessed or modified.

Caution

You must use POSIX-based programs to manage file names that differ only in case. POSIX-based programs allow you to create and manage case-sensitive file names.

You cannot use standard commands to manage file names that differ only in case. (Standard commands include those used at the command prompt, such as copy, del, and move, and their equivalents in My Computer.) For example, if you type del AnnM.Doc at the command prompt, both annm.doc and AnnM.Doc would be deleted.