Re: Case for case-sensitivity (Was: Three simple questions)

[Frank Christiny <fchris@pdq.net>]

John English wrote:
> >
> >    In the Company of my friend.       In the company of my friend.
> >    Ada presentation today.            ADA presentation today.
> >    Standing by the Bank.              Standing by the bank.
> 
> I fail to see your point -- these would all be resolved by context,
> surely?

      The point was to emphasize that for a human parser, the
   sentences are different.  Even without the context they are very
   different.  (The river could hardly be expected to have a Bank,
   unless it's the "Left Bank" of course).  The same is true in a
   case-sensitive language.  You can do "lazy" stuff like that there,
   such as I mentioned earlier; and, without regard for the context.

> > 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;
> >
> >       The first two versions are at least self-consistent.  The
> >    galling part is that the code I have to actually maintain at work
> >    is the of the latter flavor!  Maybe because it was the result of
> >    many tinkerers prior to me.  So, what do I do in this case?
> 
> Run a prettyprinter over the code. That's what tools are for.

      Sure, but you missed the point again.  The language does look
   confusing to a case-sensitive newcomer.  I guess the same happens
   going the other way around.  In any case, thanks to all of you
   guys' input I've begun to see the rationale behind
   case-insensitivity and, most of all, I recognize it seems to work.
   It shows to what extent Adaites would go to avert preventable
   errors.  Now, all I need to do is get used to it...

-- 
Frank Christiny                       fchris@pdq.net
Sr. Software Engineer                 Lockheed Martin Space Operations
Houston, Texas, USA                   http://freeweb.pdq.net/fchris/