Re: Why not using [] instead of () for array?

[dewar@gnat.com (Robert Dewar)]

Mats Karlssohn <mats@mida.se> wrote in message news:<3C7B3FC1.734F9367@mida.se>...

> I don't know the linguistic term for the little ring.

I don't think there is one, A with a circle above it is
a separate letter in Swedish that is distinct from A, in
other words this is not an A with some kind of diacritical
mark. I asked a Swedish friend "what's the name for the
little circle above the A", and he thought for the moment
and said "little circle above the A" :-)

After all, you could ask "what is the linguistic term for
the dot over a lower case I", and you would get a similar
answer.

To know whether a character such as this is a separate
letter or a letter with a diacritical mark of some kind
such as an accent, you can apply Jean Ichbiah's crossword
puzzle test. For example in French you can have an E that
is accented across but not down, but you could never have
a Swedish crossword puzzle with A horizontal and A-circle
vertical.

This came up in the context of the Ada 95 design (in particular the
CRG discussion). Jean wanted e and e-acute
to be considered equivalent. That makes some sense since 
for example in French, it is in practice optional whether
to put the accent over the upper case E (formally it is
required, but the French are so use to the practice introduced by
typewriters of omitting the accent for upper
case letters, that quite a few French folks I have talked
to have insisted that the accent is not permitted -- they
are wrong as you can quickly tell from looking at any academic
publication in French :-)

See, who would have thought that the circle over an A has
a direct Ada connection :-)