Why are some file extentions case sensitive?

What system? Apple? MS Windows? Unix?

On Windows it generally doesn’t matter. But on webservers etc. which often run on other systems such as Linux, it can make a difference.

im on windows xp right now, but mac osx 10.3 at home and i see it on both systems

maybe its cause on my web hosting its linux and thats why

That could very well be the answer.

It really depends on what it is exactly that you’re trying to do.

Are you attempting to open these files locally? Download them from a web server? Transfer them across platforms (via ftp, ssh, whatever)?

It would help to understand the mix of platforms and applications involved.

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You mention web hosting in Linux. From that I can imply you’re downloading to view in a web browser.

Perhaps your web server’s list of mime types doesn’t have the various case possibilities involved? Or it’s assigning the wrong mime type for jpeg?

Are you using the same browser on both XP and Panther? Different ones?

And what do you mean the image “doesn’t show up”? Are you seeing a broken image icon? Or just blank?

There’s also the possibility of network issues, too.

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Sorry to ramble, but there’s too many possibilities to count without more details.

its just blank when i use .jpg but shows up when i use .JPG – im just trying to view the image in a browser window…firefox 3 to be exact.

Oh, okay. So… you’re basically typing the filename into the url field.

Yes, on *nix-based web servers, the filenames are indeed case-sensitive. It would appear the file is stored on the webserver with the capital .JPG extension.

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On Windows-based web servers, the filenames aren’t case-sensitive because Windows itself doesn’t treat filenames in a case-sensitive way.