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: Case for case-sensitivity (Was: Three simple questions) Date: 2000/10/10 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 679815967 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit References: <2BED68CA963D6D55.A78776F656DA0452.75A61ED22116F1B6@lp.airnews.net> <39e2588f.21565740@news.demon.co.uk> X-Orig-Message-ID: <39E377D1.48CDF06C@pdq.net> To: Larry Kilgallen X-Accept-Language: en,es Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii NNTP-Posting-Time: Tue Oct 10 13:08:57 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: 2000-10-10T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: Larry Kilgallen wrote: > By the way, your original question at the top of this page struck me > as quite odd. While C/C++ uses case sensitivity, I always understood > that to be part of the Topsy-like development history of the Unix > operating system. To me, it is case-sensitivity that should be > (but cannot be) rationalized, as there is never a good reason for > allowing TheItem and theItem to be separate variables. Unix topsy-turvy? Man, now you got me going ;-) As opposed to the Microsoft world, Unix is the doldrums! You ask me for the case for case-sensitivity and John English says that: >Since humans consider 'D' and 'd' to be variant representations of the >same letter, why shouldn't programming languages? I can address both those questions in this post. 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? Consider the following "overloaded" sentences: 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. As for the computer languages, consider this: 1. Case sensitivity allows for a greater array of variable naming and semantics. In case-insensitive languages you cannot reuse a chunk of the english vocabulary because it has already been "privatized". Not only can you not use "while", but "While", or "WHILE", etc. Once you define "My_List", the type, you cannot declare "my_List", the object. (Weak point. Of course it's weak. I told you, I am not out to convince anyone about case-sensitivity). 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? Follow the manglers or establish my own personal touch, just to be contrary, ah? The language manual and rationale do not have any suggestions on this regard, as far as I know. Dis I convince you? Of course not. You are OK though. -- Frank Christiny fchris@pdq.net Sr. Software Engineer Lockheed Martin Space Operations Houston, Texas, USA http://freeweb.pdq.net/fchris/