From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,66bc6b039f1e005d X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: Frank Christiny Subject: Re: Case for case-sensitivity (Was: Three simple questions) Date: 2000/10/11 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 680418525 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit References: <2BED68CA963D6D55.A78776F656DA0452.75A61ED22116F1B6@lp.airnews.net> <39e2588f.21565740@news.demon.co.uk> <39E436F8.A11E1842@bton.ac.uk> X-Orig-Message-ID: <39E530EA.CF05E576@pdq.net> To: John English X-Accept-Language: en,es Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii NNTP-Posting-Time: Wed Oct 11 22:30:53 2000 Organization: PDQ.net (using Airnews.net!) NNTP-Proxy-Relay: library1-aux.airnews.net Mime-Version: 1.0 Abuse-Reports-To: abuse at pdq.net to report improper postings Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 2000-10-11T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: 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/