I ran into that same issue. When case sensitive stuff hits for rhe first time.
Also I love linux's cmd line. I grew up on MS-DOS and I feel like the computer hacker that I always dreamed I would be.
this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2025
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crossdresser downloads? Don't mind if I do!
My home is so populated of symlinks of similar namings: capital leters, other languages,...
Just another reason to use fish
I love fish. I just hate that it's not posix compliant, so if I need to run posix stuff I need to switch to sh
posix stuff
need to switch to sh
Then it turns out it was bash specific stuff
why not zsh? that's why I switched from fish
Why? Scripts can still invoke the needed shell? Or are you taking about things that like to set up a shell environment?
I use nushell btw, but I do agree fish autocompletions are the best!
I think you can use fish autocompletions in nushell?
you can, but you have to install fish, would be better if it was a default or standalone package.
Rofl
For the first time I've actually started, like, using the Documents folder to store copies of receipts, contracts, etc.
I feel like I have finally entered adulthood.
Oh shit. I feel personally identified...
Zoxide: z ds
ZSH will tab-complete it even if you have a small D
zsh not letting down our short king Ds
bcachefs entered the chat. Linus slammed the chat close.
So I realize this is a joke, but, and I am legit asking, isn't there a command where you can tell Linux to treat Downloads and downloads as the same thing?
ln -s Dowloads downloads
alias downloads="cd ~/Downloads"
edit: but if you want to get freaky in bash, alias downloads="pushd ~/Downloads"
probably works in some other shells too
Maybe, but there is always the possibility that Downloads and downloads both exist in that path and in a case sensitive file system, those are going to be two completely different directories, so adding that obfuscation on top might wind up biting you later.
That's where case-insensitive tab complete comes in. You can still tab through downloads and Downloads, and it doesn't impact anything else.
Absolutely! That's probably the best compromise to make it easier without risking something breaking or not working as expected
In Bash you can use a shell option to alter this behavior: shopt -s nocaseglob. See https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/html_node/The-Shopt-Builtin.html for more options.
Sorta. If you put a FAT32 disk or sd card into a Linux system and mount it, it will ignore case because of the way the filenames are stored in that filesystem. However, there are a lot of important features you lose working on filesystems like that, so really it should be reserved for sneakernet with other operating systems.
You can use casefold option on ext4.
Symlink ?
ln -s downloads Downloads
or
ln -s Downloads downloads
depending on your situation.
Thank you. I thought I remembered using something like this back when I ran OpenSUSE and redhat years ago.
I've kind of just accepted this is one of the differences between Linux and Windows that we as users need to understand is OS-specific.
I guess you could use an ntfs filesystem... Or if you just mean for autocompletion, I've found that if there's no completions matching e.g. readme then zsh will autocomplete README. But I'd say case sensitivity of files is a feature not a bug. People use it to make files starting with a capital letter appear at the top of a list of files in a directory.
I once got into it with a dev who had written an Arduino library. I reported a compile bug, and he said my environment must be broken. In fact, it was because the headers in the library were set for #include 'arduino.h', not Arduino.h. Which would work fine on the default settings for Windows and Mac, but not Linux.
$ ln -s ~/Downloads downloads
~~You can even hard link it if you feel fancy.~~
You can't hardlink directories on a standard *nix filesystem. NTFS has that in the form of Junctions and it's likely made more messes than it has prevented.
Ah, yes, my bad. Need a file for hard links.
I have yet to see anyone brave enough, to mount /home to NTFS
$ ln -s ~/Downloads downloads
ln -s is a symlink. Youβre better off editing user-dirs.dirs anyway
It's pronounced "Data".
alias downloads='Downloads'
alias Downloads='downloads'
Oh shit, I've never thought to do this... Would this work? Or are aliases only for commands?
This wouldn't work.
Well, it kind of would if you did alias downloads="cd Downloads" but then you wouldn't cd downloads you'd just type downloads on its own.
As other comments here already point out, you can do it with a symlink if you really want it. i.e. ln -s Downloads downloads, then you can cd downloads.
Nowhere near the same as making everything effectively case insensitive, but it works for the odd one that you always mistype.
There are ways to patch command completion and/or write a variant cd that does the job intelligently too, but those are harder work.
Day-late edit that no-one will see: The answer is bind "set completion-ignore-case on". It's embarrassing how simple this is and how long it took me to find it. I may have been trying to emulate this feature in other ways for a long time.
What was the new one? Pay respects?
try out zoxide
D