Re: Case sensitivity (was Re: no title)

[Vinzent Hoefler <ada.rocks@jlfencey.com>]

Hyman Rosen wrote:

>if you are doing the "telephone test" for code readability (that
>is, seeing if someone else can understand the code upon hearing
>it read instead of looking at it).

Never heard of that. Interesting idea anyway. ;-)

>But since Ada already allows
>one English word to stand for multiple things, I don't find this
>argument convincing.

Well, even English allows one word standing for multiple things so
that the actual meaning depends on the context.

I'd say, in most areas the context is Ada would be more often clear
(in the end we are talking about overloading here) than it would be in
C (consider BUF_LEN vs. buf_len, quite common I'd say). Well, my
personal view is probably distorted.

Personally I'd rather would like Ada to be case-sensitive with the
restriction that identifiers should never be the same, regardless of
how they are written, so I wouldn't allow Buf_Len and BUF_LEN to be in
the same view at the same time, but OTOH I would clearly distinct
between the two.
This would render the "advantages" of case-sensitivity completely
useless but force the programmers to have a consistent style in all
places without any style check or pretty printers. :-P

BTW, you might have fun trying
<http://www.fecyk.ca/spamalbum/56k/this-function-is-void.mp3> for a
"telephone test". As you can probably guess from the name, it's C. ;-)


Vinzent.

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