From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,FREEMAIL_FROM autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,a50a3c40267219cc X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2001-10-22 22:55:34 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!jfk3-feed1.news.digex.net!dca6-feed2.news.digex.net!intermedia!newsfeed1.cidera.com!Cidera!cyclone1.gnilink.net!spamfinder.gnilink.net!typhoon1.gnilink.net.POSTED!not-for-mail Message-ID: <3BD503FA.6000700@mail.com> From: Hyman Rosen User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win 9x 4.90; en-US; rv:0.9.5+) Gecko/20011019 X-Accept-Language: en-us MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Why not combine Ada and C++? References: <3105e154.0110150021.32ff5426@posting.google.com> <9qeg5r$266$1@trog.dera.gov.uk> <3BCB3D5E.8FCE9C49@sparc01.ftw.rsc.raytheon.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2001 05:39:43 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 151.202.54.24 X-Complaints-To: business-support@verizon.com X-Trace: typhoon1.gnilink.net 1003815583 151.202.54.24 (Tue, 23 Oct 2001 01:39:43 EDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2001 01:39:43 EDT Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:15061 Date: 2001-10-23T05:39:43+00:00 List-Id: Wes Groleau wrote: > the _only_ justification for case sensitivity is backwards compatibility. Only for people who refuse to consider the possibility of any language but English. Modern programming languages and operating systems allow names to be written in any of the world's languages. For those languages which have case at all (and for those which have more than two), the rules for changing case are extremely locale-dependent, context-sensitive, and not necessarily character-for-character. Instead of trying to incorporate all of this knowledge into compilers and operating systems, I find it much more reasonable for them to simply use the sequence of characters which they have been given. And as far as causing confusion, Ada already allows the same name to mean multiple things. Quoting from Barnes, type Colour is (Red, Amber, Green); type Stone is (Amber, Beryl, Quartz); So when you see Amber in the code, you don't instantly know what it refers to - you have to examine the context. Reading it aloud doesn't help either. I fail to see why this is any different than allowing identifiers to differ only in case.