Re: I'm a total push-over..

Jeremy Maitin-Shepard [off-list ref] writes:

In theory, I agree that this is possible, but in practice it may not be
reasonable at all.  Consider two possible comparison functions:

1. compare file names as strings case-insensitively assuming a latin 1
encoding

2. compare file names as strings case-insensitively assuming a UTF-8
encoding

Actually writing a hash function such that two strings hash to the same
value if either of these comparison functions says that the strings are
equal would appear to be rather difficult.

Once you start adding more "case folding" supported filesystems
to the repertoire, such a unified hash function Dscho suggests
needs to throw paths that other (N-1) "case folding" filesystems
treat as distinct but only 1 filesystem treats "equivalent" into
the same hash bucket.  I would say not just difficult but the
resulting function would have too many collisions to make it
ineffective.