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=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,8d472879e3f609e0 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2003-06-03 08:11:04 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!news.airnews.net!cabal12.airnews.net!usenet From: "John R. Strohm" Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Case sensitivity (was Re: no title) Date: Tue, 3 Jun 2003 10:05:24 -0500 Organization: Airnews.net! at Internet America Message-ID: References: <0vGdnQFmVPoZj0Gj4p2dnA@gbronline.com> <1054647054.761122@master.nyc.kbcfp.com> <1054651042.211055@master.nyc.kbcfp.com> Abuse-Reports-To: abuse at airmail.net to report improper postings NNTP-Proxy-Relay: library2.airnews.net NNTP-Posting-Time: Tue, 03 Jun 2003 10:09:02 -0500 (CDT) NNTP-Posting-Host: !`Ru%1k-WHPG5O$ (Encoded at Airnews!) X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2800.1106 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1106 Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:38498 Date: 2003-06-03T10:05:24-05:00 List-Id: "Hyman Rosen" wrote in message news:1054651042.211055@master.nyc.kbcfp.com... > Preben Randhol wrote: > > It is far easier to rather better to use different > > words than to simply change the case. > > The point remains that I may want to use the same word > in different cases to mean different things. The C > example of upper case as the type and lower case as the > object is an example. Ada says I can't do that. Why? > Because having one English word mean two different things > is confusing? But Ada already allows that. So it's an > arbitrary decision made by people who don't like case > sensitivity forcing their view on those who do. No, Hyman, it was a decision made by people who recognized, at the time that the decision had to be made, that there were still a lot of organizations who would be using the language who were still stuck with upper case only development environments. I don't think you appreciate just how common IBM mainframes were in the military-industrial complex software development world. IBM mainframes DIDN'T HAVE LOWER CASE for programming. Period. This is also why there were the alternate character choices (: for # for based numbers, for example): some of those machines didn't HAVE # characters available. If you mandate case sensitivity, you blow reuse completely out of the water. A retread C programmer writes a program using case sensitivity to discriminate among various variables, and he gives a copy to someone at GD/FW, which only has upper case, and there isn't a DAMNED thing GD can do to make use of it. Making the language case-insensitive fixes that problem, by preventing it from ever occurring.