Topic summary

Case preservation

Case preservation

In file systems, case preservation is the preservation of the letter case (uppercase or lowercase) of letters in file names. If an attempt is made to create a file named "ThisIsAFile" on a file system that preserves letter case, the file's name will be "ThisIsAFile", rather than, for example, "thisisafile" or "THISISAFILE".

In contrast, a file system that does not preserve letter case will typically store letters in file names either as all lowercase or as all uppercase, and the letter case information will thus be lost. If an attempt is made to create a file named "ThisIsAFile" on a file system that does not preserve letter case, the file's name will be "thisisafile" if letters are stored as all lowercase or "THISISAFILE" if letters are stored as all uppercase.