Re: The caselessness is one of the things I like best!

[James Rogers <jimmaureenrogers@worldnet.att.net>]

Gerhard H�ring wrote:
> 
> On Mon, 15 Oct 2001 14:06:18 +0200, Petter Fryklund <qsbpefr@esavionics.se> wrote:
> > If the only difference between two entities is the case,  I think the
> > program will be very hard to maintain.
> 
> True. The compiler probably should show a warning in this case. But
> Ada's case insensitivity is so stupid it hurts. Don't tell me it's
> needed for your weird 7 bit processor with EBDIC (sp?) character set.
> Cross-compile if you need to support such broken processors.
> 
> I want inconsistent casing to be a syntax error in a language. Oh yes.
> And the keywords be either lower or upper case, too (I'd prefer upper
> case as in MODULA-2/3).

Ada intentionally left out case sensitivity because of its emphasis
on human readability. There was no processor-based reason as you have
implied. In fact, it takes less code to parse a string with case
sensitivity than with case insensitivity.

Case sensitivity as found in C, C++, and Java leads to people using
several identifiers such as "Count", "count", and "COUNT" in the
same code. Human brains have been trained to ignore such differences
in text. The use of such similar identifiers can cause serious
confusion for humans reading your code.

Note that the C family of languages provides case sensitivity
without enforcing consistent casing. It merely identifies 
instances of improperly defined identifiers. Your proposal to make
Ada case sensitive and enforce consistent case usage would be just
as repulsive to C programmers as is case insensitivity.

When you make the claim that Ada would be popular if it jus looked
like C, you imply that C programmers do not want to learn another
language. It is like saying that Swedish would be more popular if
it just looked like French. 

Look at the reaction of C "hard heads". They find both C++ and Java
revolting. Making Ada look like C++ or Java would reduce Ada's
readability without making it one bit more popular. There would be
nothing to gain from such a move.

Jim Rogers
Colorado Springs, Colorado USA