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=-0.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00, REPLYTO_WITHOUT_TO_CC autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,a50a3c40267219cc X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2001-10-15 11:01:26 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!logbridge.uoregon.edu!feeder.qis.net!nntp1.roc.gblx.net!nntp.gblx.net!nntp1.phx1.gblx.net!nntp.gblx.net!nntp.gblx.net!nntp-cust.primenet.com!news.streamgate.de!gerhard.nospam From: gerhard.nospam@bigfoot.de (Gerhard =?iso-8859-1?Q?H=E4ring?=) Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: The caselessness is one of the things I like best! Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2001 20:01:17 +0200 Organization: Streamgate AG Message-ID: References: Reply-To: gerhard@bigfoot.de NNTP-Posting-Host: 213-196-68-75.hosts.streamgate.de X-Trace: news.streamgate.de 1003167592 21081 213.196.68.75 (15 Oct 2001 17:39:52 GMT) X-Complaints-To: news@streamgateag.de NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2001 17:39:52 +0000 (UTC) User-Agent: slrn/0.9.6.3 (Linux) Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:14560 Date: 2001-10-15T20:01:17+02:00 List-Id: On 15 Oct 2001 12:38:55 -0500, Larry Kilgallen wrote: >> 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" ? I don't like C'ish languages very much and my cultural imprint was in MODULA-2 and Python land, though I got my share of C, C++ and Java. I encountered case insensitivity only in toy languages like BASIC and (Standard) Pascal. >if i should choose to Capitalize thINGs Irregularly, it may seem >STrange to your eyes, but you do understand what i am saying. You're making it harder for the reader, therefore you should get syntax warnings from the compiler and if you continue to ignore them, the compiler should delete the source file ;-) >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. Natural written language is case sensitive (in the few languages I know, maybe Hebrew isn't). Therefore I believe artificial languages that describe algorithms should be, too. You don't mix capitalisation in your mathematic works, right? n or |N, that matters. Programming languages are just a special form of maths, anyway. Gerhard -- mail: gerhard bigfoot de registered Linux user #64239 web: http://www.cs.fhm.edu/~ifw00065/ OpenPGP public key id 86AB43C0 public key fingerprint: DEC1 1D02 5743 1159 CD20 A4B6 7B22 6575 86AB 43C0 reduce(lambda x,y:x+y,map(lambda x:chr(ord(x)^42),tuple('zS^BED\nX_FOY\x0b')))