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Date: 25 Jun 93 21:12:11 GMT
From: seas.gwu.edu!mfeldman@uunet.uu.net  (Michael Feldman)
Subject: Re: Ada Operators in 9x
Message-ID: <1993Jun25.211211.231@seas.gwu.edu>
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

In article <9306241414.AA01973@fuentez.com> hildjj@JUPITER.FUENTEZ.COM (Joe Hil
debrand) writes:
>
>> Whoa. Back up. Are you saying that case sensitivity is a good thing?
>> Am I missing liberally-placed smileys somewhere?
>
>It is nice to be able to sling your case around as you please, but if
>you are trying for a consistent coding style across several (or hundreds)
>of programmers, that style would be a lot easier to enforce if the 
>compiler could catch the case deviations.
>
But how would that happen if the language were case-sensitive? My case
(no pun) in point is Modula-2, in which the reserved words MUST be in
upper-case, which is no problem really, but additionally you can declare
  q: Integer;
  Q: Integer;
in the same block. Suppose you _meant_ to write

  q := 35;

but instead hit the shift key accidentally and wrote

  Q := 35;

The same thing can happen in C, which is, I presume, why C programmers
use lower case almost exclusively.

My single-keystroke error above would NOT be caught if the language were
case-sensitive, but of course with Ada (like Pascal), the compiler
would nail you for a doubly declated variable. I like this. I HATE
single-keystroke errors that have big semantic effects, because I'm
as really liusy typist. :-)

Enforcing a lexical style is IMHO a good job for a nice style-checker tool,
or even a prettyprinter that can do it all for you. Some of these things
exist; if they are not powerful enough for your project, scream at your
vendor - that's what the market is (supposed to be) for!

The case-sensitivity issue is purely academic anyhow - Ada is what it is,
and Ada9X won't change this, because it would be REALLY damaging to
upward compatibility.

Cheers -

Mike Feldman
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael B. Feldman -  co-chair, SIGAda Education Committee
Professor, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
The George Washington University -  Washington, DC 20052 USA
202-994-5253 (voice) - 202-994-5296 (fax) - mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Internet)
"Pork is what those other guys get from the Government."
------------------------------------------------------------------------