317646 - nsIFile.moveTo() has problem renaming a file to the same name but with different case (on Windows)

Status: NEW

(Core :: XPCOM, defect, P3)

Description

[Mime Čuvalo]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20051111 Firefox/1.5
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20051111 Firefox/1.5

moveTo() will throw an exception if you are just doing a case change on a file on Windows.
Example:
test.xul -> TEST.XUL

Same name but different case and it throws this:
[Exception... "Component returned failure code: 0x80520012 (NS_ERROR_FILE_NOT_FOUND) [nsILocalFile.moveTo]" nsresult: "0x80520012 (NS_ERROR_FILE_NOT_FOUND)"

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.  On Windows, rename a file using moveTo() from lowercase to uppercase or vice versa.



Expected Results:  
Should work or there should be a cleaner way to rename a file.

Comment 1

[:Gavin Sharp [email: [e-mail]]]

The windows file system is case-preserving, but not case-sensitive. You therefore cannot simply change the case of a file's name.

Comment 2

[Mime Čuvalo]

I think you misunderstand, perhaps.  It will work as expected and it will make the change for you but it unnecessarily throws an exception along with it.  You can try it out on my program FireFTP ( http://fireftp.mozdev.org ).  It's just an inconvenience to the programmer that I have to check for it and realize that it is an invalid exception, that's all.  Here's how I'm dealing with it in my code:

try {
  var newFile = this.init(file.parent.path + gSlash + newName);

  if (newFile && newFile.exists() && (gSlash == '/' || oldName.toLowerCase() != newName.toLowerCase())) {
    error(gStrbundle.getString("renameFail"));
    return false;
  }

  file.moveTo(null, newName);           // rename the file
} catch (ex) {
  if (gSlash == '\\' && oldName.toLowerCase() == newName.toLowerCase()) {
                 // we renamed the file the same but with different case
    return true; // for some reason this throws an exception
  }

  debug(ex);
  error(gStrbundle.getString("renameFail"));
  return false;
}

Comment 3

[:Gavin Sharp [email: [e-mail]]]

(In reply to comment #2)
> I think you misunderstand, perhaps.  It will work as expected and it will make
> the change for you but it unnecessarily throws an exception along with it.

OK, reopening for investigation.

Comment 4

[Doug Turner (:dougt)]

mass reassigning to nobody.