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

[Kilgallen@SpamCop.net (Larry Kilgallen)]

In article <ev_remove_this_ans-1510011113000001@192.168.1.254>, ev_remove_this_ans@evans.pgh.pa.us (Arthur Evans Jr) writes:
> Larry Kilgallen wrote:
> 
>>         Any program that has different meanings for "item" and "Item"
>> is very poorly written.
> 
> and several others made similar comments.
> 
> I agree.
> 
> OTOH, I don't think it should be the goal of language design to
> legislate against such usage -- it can't succeed in doing so.  For
> example, nothing in Ada's specification legislates against using
> OO00OO0O00O00 and OO00O00O00O00 as identifiers, or
> lll11l1l1lll1l1ll1 and lll11l1l1l1l1l1ll1, or mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
> and mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.  I think use of such identifiers is
> fully as bad practice as using 'item' and 'Item'.

But Ada does legislate against My_Name and My__Name in the same,
by prohibiting double underscores.  At some point, local standards
must take ove.r

> Case sensitivity of identifiers, like many other parts of the
> language, would be a feature that could either be used to advantage
> or be abused.

I disagree that it would be a feature.  I see absolutely no benefit.

If you want your programs to provide a standard casing for each
identifier, you can do that with a utility program, perhaps by
calling ASIS.  But when you find a deviation, fix it.  Don't
hassle the programmer about it.