Re: Some questions about Ada.

[heatwole@erols.com (Kevin D. Heatwole)]

In article <dewar.831213757@schonberg>, dewar@cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) wrote:
> 
> (talking about confusion arising from random casing)
> 
> I see it! I think it is terrible Ada style to be inconsistent in casing
> keywords or identifiers. In fact I think it is nice if the compiler has
> an option to prevent such sloppiness (when we compile in internal GNAT
> mode, consistent casing is enforced).

I agree that consistent formatting is nice, but I have been programming in
Ada since 1983 (and have debugged a lot of problems in that time) and I
have never come across an instance where inconsistent casing of keywords
or identifiers has caused a problem in Ada (I have seen this happen a couple
of times in C and assembly).

Of course, that isn't to say it can't cause a problem, but I think it is
rare (e.g., Use clauses sometimes make visible very similar names).  Now, 
I have seen some problems due to inconsistent indentation (which is closely
related to case).  I have also seen some problems with short variable names
that use similar letters (like i and j).

I generally like a compilation unit to be consistently formatted, but I
don't mind if separate compilation units use different formatting/casing.

Kevin Heatwole
OC Systems, Inc.