Re: The caselessness is one of the things I like best!

[Kilgallen@SpamCop.net (Larry Kilgallen)]

In article <slrn9sm77l.8go.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal>, gerhard.nospam@bigfoot.de (Gerhard =?iso-8859-1?Q?H=E4ring?=) writes:
> On Mon, 15 Oct 2001 17:00:03 GMT, tmoran@acm.org <tmoran@acm.org> wrote:
>>> > If the only difference between two entities is the case,  I think the
>>> > program will be very hard to maintain.
>>>
>>> True. The compiler probably should show a warning in this case.
>>  In fact you can write a case sensitive Ada program, and the compiler
>>will in fact complain if you try to declare two entities where the only
>>difference is case.  The only difference with C is that the compiler
>>doesn't warn you, but silently creates two separate entities.  :)
> 
> It's probably best described by an example what I mean with inconsistent
> casing.
> 
>     VAR n: Integer;
>     BEGIN
>         N := 5;
> 
> I'd want to get a syntax error here. IIRC I can get GNAT to warn me
> about this and you will perhaps think that this is only a matter of
> style and best handled by tools apart from the compiler.
> 
> Perhaps I'm irrational but Ada's behaviour here reminds me too much of
> BASIC.
> 
> This is one of the rare points where Ada allows the programmer to do
> something stupid.

Aside from someone brought up on C, how would it seem "stupid" ?

if i should choose to Capitalize thINGs Irregularly, it may seem
STrange to your eyes, but you do understand what i am saying.

Many people feel a given program should use consistent casing,
but that is just for the humans, not for the compiler.  It is
similar to the presence of comments in the source.