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From: dvdeug@x8b4e516e.dhcp.okstate.edu (David Starner)
Subject: Re: Case for case-sensitivity (Was: Three simple questions)
Date: 2000/10/10
Message-ID: <8rvnu2$8201@news.cis.okstate.edu>#1/1
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Organization: Oklahoma State University
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Reply-To: dstarner98@aasaa.ofe.org
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Date: 2000-10-10T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

On Tue, 10 Oct 2000 11:10:57 -0700, Frank Christiny wrote:
>      Unix topsy-turvy?  Man, now you got me going   ;-)
>      As opposed to the Microsoft world, Unix is the doldrums!

Please don't go there. 

>      Not being a partisan of case-sensitivity I can nevertheless
>   assert that, first of all, Humans DO care for case sensitivity,
>   otherwise why have case-sensitivity in the grammar to begin with?

DO? What does that mean? ;-) Case sensitivity carries grammar and,
less formally, intonation. Its use in English is governed by a set
of (complex) rules, that have no direct analog in progamming.

>2. Case sensitivity standardizes the coding practice of the
>   internals.  Some Ada samples of the different practices I have
>   been able to observe just two months into my introduction to the
>   language:
>
>   WITH Ada.Text_IO               with Ada.Text_IO
>   PROCEDURE Some_Procedure       procedure Some_Procedure
>   my_int : INTEGER;              My_Int : integer;
>   BEGIN                          begin
>      NULL:                          null;
>   END Some_Procedure;            end Some_Procedure;
>
>   With Ada.Text_IO
>   procedure Some_Procedure
>   my_int : INTEGER;
>   begin
>      NULL;
>   end Some_Procedure;

In a way, this is an argument for case-insensitivity. In a case sensitive
language, you would still have the ambigious casing on stuff like my_int,
but now it would matter. A lot of C code that used varying cases has coding
standards to keep the casing consistent - that wouldn't hurt for your Ada
code.

Anyway, the code in the upper right hand corner seems to correspond with
what I've been told is good. If you're using GNAT, -gnaty will enforce roughly
that casing, as well as tons of other style rules (which you can turn off and
on one by one, so, for example, you only get the casing rules.)

-- 
David Starner - dstarner98@aasaa.ofe.org
http/ftp: dvdeug.dhis.org
And crawling, on the planet's face, some insects called the human race.
Lost in space, lost in time, and meaning.
	-- RHPS