Re: Caselessness...

[FGD <presbeis@look.ca>]

I think you're still reacting to that other thread which I wanted to 
avoid by starting a new thread...

My question is technical: Is the "loophole" I mentionned possible within 
the Ada language specs? (I don't really care if it can be done with a 
preprocessor, or even if it is desirable to do so with or without a 
preprocessor...)

Marin David Condic wrote:

> If someone is really convinced that it is a problem, then we'd have another
> instance where the language can be "improved" with a preprocessor.


Many Ada compilers provide some preprocessor support this does not go 
against Ada design, though Ada doesn't require it and mos often doesn't 
need it.

> Build something that collects up the identifiers and creates unique IDs for them
> and mangles up some case-insensitive names for legal Ada output. I just have
> my doubts that this is such a horrendous problem for Ada (I'd consider it an
> advantage!) that if only it had been made case sensitive, C/C++/Java
> programmers would be flocking to it by the millions.


There's already plenty of that and for legitimate reasons, e.g. see the 
CORBA to Ada language mapping. But it is irrelevant to my question.


> It might even be marketable for those who want to work with a case-sensitive
> version of Ada. It would need only be smart enough to distinguish between
> regular Ada files and Case Sensitive Ada(tm). Clearly it is something a lot
> of people would prefer.


It might be marketable, but is it acceptable within the current specs?

> Would they prefer it enough to live with a
> non-standard Ada variant & use a preprocessor? 


Wherein the specs do you see that it is against standard, or even 
undesirable, to work with a preprocessor?

> (Better they decide what they are willing to live with than break all 

> the existing Ada code that is out there! :-)

AFAIK all Ada compilers are required to support at least ASCII so all 
English based Ada code out there should compile with any validated 
compiler. But the ada specs explicietly allow for other language 
support---so if we allow support for Greek and Russian why don't we 
allow support for CaseSensitiveEnglishForDisgruntledCProgrammers(tm)? ;-)