Insensitive case

Configuration

• Introduce the icase option name

  • Which is made persistent through the MODULES_ICASE environment variable

  • Many people asked for separate options as applying an icase approach to a module loading context is not seen desired by everybody whereas it is in an module search context

  • Defined levels of enablement are:

    • never

    • search

    • always

  • icase option will be set by default to

    • never in v4 not to change existing behaviors

    • search in v5 as it seems to be a general improvement for everybody

  • A command-line switch --icase (short form -i) is added

    • Was there in Modules 3 (for search sub-command only)

    • When set, equals to an always icase mode

• No immediate need for a --no-icase command-line switch

  • Combining configuration option and --icase command-line switch seems sufficient

Specification

• When enabled, match query string in a case insensitive manner

  • query soFT returns soft, SOFT, soFT, SOft, sOft and so on

• In case multiple files correspond to the same icase word

  • like soft, soFT, SoFt, SOFT filenames

  • query SOFT returns SOFT (exact match is returned among possibilities)

  • query SoFt returns SoFt (exact match is returned among possibilities)

  • query SOft returns soft (highest lexicographically sorted match is returned among possibilities)

  • query soFt returns soft (highest lexicographically sorted match is returned among possibilities)

• When icase is enabled for search context it applies to

  • module specification passed as argument in following context:

    • Module version specification to return all matching modules

• When icase is enabled for all context it applies to

  • search context like described above

  • module specification passed as argument in following contexts:

    • Module version specification to select one module

    • Module version specification to check compatibility

  • module alias and symbolic version resolution triggered by

    • module-info alias

    • module-info version

    • getPathToModule

    • isModuleEvaluated

  • the gathering of all module alias and symbolic version targeting a given module

    • this is processed by getAllModuleResolvedName procedure

    • which is called by

      • doesLoadingModuleMatchesName

      • cmdModuleLoad

• Note that whatis specification passed as argument to the search sub-command is always matched in a case insensitive manner

Corner cases

• When looking for the best match among loaded modules to select one module to unload, lastly loaded module, or firstly loaded module depending on unload_match_order configuration, will be returned

  • When insensitive case is enabled, last or first icase match will be returned even if an exact match is present among the loaded module list

  • This behavior has an impact in case multiple available modules correspond to the same insensitive case string

    • For instance iCaSe and IcAsE modules

• When icase is enabled on all contexts and multiple directories match same icase module name

  • for instance following modules exist: ICASE/1.1, icase/1.2, iCaSe/1.3 and iCaSe/1.4

  • a module avail -i icase will sort iCaSe/1.4 as the highest entry

  • however a module load -i icase command will load icase/1.2

    • as icase directory matches query

  • and also module load -i ICase command will load icase/1.2

    • as no directory ICase exists, result is returned from highest directory: icase