From: Florian Weimer <fw@deneb.enyo.de>
Subject: Re: Modern languages are case sensitive?
Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2001 17:18:10 +0200
Date: 2001-10-16T17:18:10+02:00 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <87g08jobpp.fsf@deneb.enyo.de> (raw)
In-Reply-To: 5ee5b646.0110160342.23b9481c@posting.google.com
dewar@gnat.com (Robert Dewar) writes:
> a) the following program is quite awful, and should
> obviously not be permitted in any language:
>
> Main : integer;
> main : integer;
> ...
In C#, you can have
int main;
int main;
int int;
intother;
Of course, this is only the visual presentation. ;-) The actual
representation uses alternative representations of ASCII characters
(LATIN SMALL LETTER DOTLESS I followed by COMBINING DOT ABOVE) and a
ZERO WIDTH SPACE.
Clearly, Unicode is not suitable for identifiers. There are five
different ways to represent a symbol which looks like a capital H!
> By the way, if I was writing a C compiler, I would include
> a warning if two identifiers differed only in case, so that
> the same desirable semantics is achieved.
Some case-sensitive OO languages (for example, Python) have quite a
useful idiom: capitalized identifiers refer to classes, all-lowercase
ones to temporary objects of the corresponding class.
> And I can't help but get a chuckle out of someone thinking
> of Unix as a "modern operating system". Indeed if you
> do look at modern operating systems (e.g. Windows XP, or
> OS/2), they are case insensitive.
AFAIK NTFS *is* case sensitive. It's the Win32 subsystem which
presents a case-insensitive view of the file system. Using other
subsystems, you can create names which only differ in case.
(Consumer versions of Windows were not even case-preserving, which I
consider a bug.)
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2001-10-16 15:18 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 85+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2001-10-15 8:21 Why not combine Ada and C++? Mike Meng
2001-10-15 10:29 ` Larry Kilgallen
2001-10-15 10:36 ` Robert*
2001-10-15 11:15 ` Stephen Cole
2001-10-15 12:06 ` The caselessness is one of the things I like best! Petter Fryklund
2001-10-15 12:21 ` Gerhard Häring
2001-10-15 12:48 ` UPPERCASE is the typgraphical equivalent of shouting ;-) Petter Fryklund
2001-10-15 12:54 ` The caselessness is one of the things I like best! James Rogers
2001-10-15 13:11 ` Larry Kilgallen
2001-10-15 15:12 ` Arthur Evans Jr
2001-10-15 16:00 ` Larry Kilgallen
2001-10-18 19:48 ` Simon Wright
2001-10-18 23:35 ` Larry Kilgallen
2001-10-16 8:48 ` John English
2001-10-16 13:11 ` James Rogers
2001-10-16 18:10 ` tmoran
2001-10-17 8:53 ` Philip Anderson
2001-10-17 10:57 ` Larry Kilgallen
2001-10-19 14:52 ` john mann
2001-10-15 15:13 ` Marin David Condic
2001-10-15 17:00 ` tmoran
2001-10-15 17:29 ` Gerhard Häring
2001-10-15 17:38 ` Larry Kilgallen
2001-10-15 18:01 ` Gerhard Häring
2001-10-15 19:04 ` David Starner
2001-10-15 18:15 ` David Starner
2001-10-15 17:35 ` Marin David Condic
2001-10-15 18:18 ` Pascal Obry
2001-10-15 18:57 ` Marin David Condic
2001-10-15 22:46 ` Jeffrey Carter
2001-10-16 13:32 ` Ted Dennison
2001-10-22 2:10 ` David Thompson
2001-10-15 13:03 ` Alfred Hilscher
2001-10-22 20:27 ` Kenneth Almquist
2001-10-15 14:39 ` Why not combine Ada and C++? Marin David Condic
2001-10-15 16:17 ` Alfred Hilscher
2001-10-15 16:35 ` Marin David Condic
2001-10-15 20:15 ` Robert*
2001-10-15 21:27 ` Marin David Condic
2001-10-15 22:50 ` Jeffrey Carter
2001-10-18 19:53 ` Simon Wright
2001-10-21 5:54 ` AG
2001-10-24 14:48 ` A UNISYS story Petter Fryklund
2001-10-24 15:03 ` Ted Dennison
2001-10-25 7:37 ` Petter Fryklund
2001-10-15 17:41 ` Why not combine Ada and C++? Stephen Cole
2001-10-15 18:27 ` tmoran
2001-10-15 20:24 ` Wes Groleau
2001-10-15 20:03 ` Wes Groleau
2001-10-15 18:42 ` Modern languages are case sensitive? Jeffrey Carter
2001-10-15 19:20 ` Larry Kilgallen
2001-10-15 22:54 ` Jeffrey Carter
2001-10-16 11:21 ` Dmitry Kazakov
2001-10-16 11:42 ` Robert Dewar
2001-10-16 13:16 ` Dale Stanbrough
2001-10-16 23:43 ` David Botton
2001-10-17 1:42 ` Larry Kilgallen
2001-10-16 14:36 ` Arthur Evans Jr
2001-10-16 14:50 ` Chris Morgan
2001-10-16 15:18 ` Florian Weimer [this message]
2001-10-16 15:47 ` Wes Groleau
2001-10-16 16:48 ` Florian Weimer
2001-10-16 17:12 ` David Starner
2001-10-16 20:32 ` Florian Weimer
2001-10-16 21:37 ` David Starner
2001-10-17 8:39 ` Florian Weimer
2001-10-18 0:00 ` Will
2001-10-18 2:12 ` Larry Kilgallen
2001-10-18 2:32 ` Darren New
2001-10-18 11:32 ` Larry Kilgallen
2001-10-15 19:47 ` Why not combine Ada and C++? Wes Groleau
2001-10-23 5:39 ` Hyman Rosen
2001-10-23 6:11 ` Richard Riehle
2001-10-15 19:28 ` Baugereau
2001-10-15 20:05 ` Ted Dennison
2001-10-16 7:38 ` Martin Dowie
2001-10-16 11:44 ` Pascal Obry
[not found] ` <01c155a0$7dd31b80$1b7af2c3@akzvbymr>
2001-10-15 20:02 ` Ted Dennison
2001-10-15 20:55 ` Adrian Knoth
2001-10-15 22:15 ` Eric Merritt
2001-10-15 22:42 ` tmoran
[not found] ` <01c15665$dc2e6c00$9b29e8d4@akzvbymr>
2001-10-16 17:48 ` Ted Dennison
2001-10-16 18:04 ` Larry Kilgallen
2001-10-16 23:01 ` tmoran
2001-10-16 18:51 ` Marin David Condic
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