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From: ev_remove_this_ans@evans.pgh.pa.us (Arthur Evans Jr)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: The caselessness is one of the things I like best!
Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2001 11:12:59 -0400
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Date: 2001-10-15T11:12:59-04:00
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Larry Kilgallen wrote:

>         Any program that has different meanings for "item" and "Item"
> is very poorly written.

and several others made similar comments.

I agree.

OTOH, I don't think it should be the goal of language design to
legislate against such usage -- it can't succeed in doing so.  For
example, nothing in Ada's specification legislates against using
OO00OO0O00O00 and OO00O00O00O00 as identifiers, or
lll11l1l1lll1l1ll1 and lll11l1l1l1l1l1ll1, or mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
and mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.  I think use of such identifiers is
fully as bad practice as using 'item' and 'Item'.

Case sensitivity of identifiers, like many other parts of the
language, would be a feature that could either be used to advantage
or be abused.  In DR meetings I made this point and pushed for case
sensitivity; I lost the argument.  It's clearly a dead issue now
for Ada, as there's no possibility that an Ada revision could
incorporate such a non upward compatible change.  Oh well...

Note, BTW, that Ada does forbid use of O__________________ and
O_________________ as identifiers.  "You can't read the listing
without a ruler.

Art Evans

Make the obvious change to my email address to reply to me.