Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!ucsd!ucbvax!ENG.SUN.COM!Mitch.Bradley
From: Mitch.Bradley@ENG.SUN.COM
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: Forth style
Message-ID: <9105201330.AA15890@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: 16 May 91 23:30:57 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: Mitch.Bradley%ENG.SUN.COM@SCFVM.GSFC.NASA.GOV
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 39

> However, in my opinion, [ lower case ] people and languages are
> throwing away half the alphabet.

People are conditioned to interpret "hello" and "Hello" as the same word.
In natural languages, capitalization is generally used to give clues about
sentence structure (i.e. the beginning of a sentence or proper nouns in
English, all nouns in German).  There are cases where the capitalization
or absence of capitalization of a word changes the meaning of the sentence,
but those cases are rare.  More often, people simply make mistakes and
use incorrect capitalization in violation of the (rather complicated and
somewhat arbitrary) rules.

For example, according to the rules, "FORTH" is incorrect.  All caps
signifies an acronym (a "word" composed of the first letters of the
words in a phrase).  (Aside: Most acronyms are silly, and I wish they
would go away.  Unfortunately, many people seem to have an irresistable
urge to name products with acronyms; the phrase the acronyn stands for
isu usually rather contrived, and is generally forgotten in short order.)

Since the letters f-o-r-t-h do not stand for five other words, the
name of the language should be spelled "Forth".  Few people care about
this distinction, and when we communicate, we interpret "Forth" and
"FORTH" and "forth" to mean the same thing.

Although some of my Forth systems are case-sensitive, my current thinking
is that case sensitivity is a bad idea, because it confuses people.

The only operating system I know that that does the "right thing" is OS-9.
OS-9 allows you to create files with mixed case names.  The capitalization
may be used to give "clues" about the file (all caps is typically used
for directory names).  However, the file name searching mechanism is
case-insensitive.  OS-9 does not allow you to create different files
whose names differ only in the case of the letters.

I am certain of one thing: A programmer who creates 2 different names
that differ only in capitalization is asking for trouble, even if the
system is case sensitive.

Mitch.Bradley@Eng.Sun.COM