Case Sensitive

Case Sensitive

WebDynamic™ Web Glossary

When using a search engine, capital letters (upper case) retrieve only upper case. Most search tools are not case sensitive or only respond to initial capitals, as in proper names. It is always safe to key all lower case (no capitals), because lower case will always retrieve upper case.

When matching a string of letters, it is case sensitive if capital and lower case letters must match exactly. If an operating system or a piece of software is case sensitive, it will see all of the following text strings as different:

STRING
string
StrinG

Since upper and lower case are differently coded in computers, it takes programming to make them match at all. On the other hand, MSDOS, older versions of windows, and most search engines are programmed to recognize the above strings as identical. On the web and the Internet, basic addresses are never case sensitive, but paths and filenames may be, depending on the operating system. By basic addresses, I mean the part of the address that ends with the domain:

http://www.WebDynamic™.com.au
http://www.webdynamic.com.au

The above addresses will always match. The next two pairs will not necessarily match, depending on the server:

http://www.webdynamic.com.au/iMageOne.jpg
http://www.webdynamic.com.au/imageone.jpg

http://www.webdynamic.com.au/Directory/
http://www.webdynamic.com.au/directory/