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: Kilgallen@eisner.decus.org.nospam (Larry Kilgallen) Subject: Re: Case for case-sensitivity (Was: Three simple questions) Date: 2000/10/12 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 680534382 References: <2BED68CA963D6D55.A78776F656DA0452.75A61ED22116F1B6@lp.airnews.net> <39e2588f.21565740@news.demon.co.uk> <39E436F8.A11E1842@bton.ac.uk> X-Complaints-To: abuse@verio.net X-Trace: iad-read.news.verio.net 971351143 216.44.122.34 (Thu, 12 Oct 2000 11:45:43 GMT) Organization: LJK Software NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2000 11:45:43 GMT Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 2000-10-12T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: In article , Frank Christiny writes: > 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/