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From: geoff@desint.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: Long names in System V
Message-ID: <319@desint.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 8-Apr-87 05:01:36 EST
Article-I.D.: desint.319
Posted: Wed Apr  8 05:01:36 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 11-Apr-87 07:22:59 EST
References: <040187.111854.dan@ibm.com> <311@desint.UUCP> <776@jumbo.dec.com> <16197@sun.uucp> <3059@jade.BERKELEY.EDU>
Reply-To: geoff@desint.UUCP (Geoff Kuenning)
Organization: Interrupt Technology Corp., Manhattan Beach, CA
Lines: 26

In article <3059@jade.BERKELEY.EDU> oster@lapis.berkeley.edu (David Phillip Oster) writes:

> On the contrary:
> The underscore as a word separator has its origin in systems with a
> limited character set: no upper and lower case, just upper case and
> underscore.

"On the contrary" yourself;  you should research your history a bit more
carefully.  The history of computing shows a long effort, starting in the
late fifties and ending in the mid-seventies, to develop good techniques
for naming variables.  "Special" characters were introduced fairly early
in this sequence;  the first I am aware of is Cobol's hyphen.  The
underscore was eventually chosen because most people find it to be visually
very close to the blank.  And, as you have probably noticed, the blank is
what natural languages use, and what people are best at parsing.

PerhapsYouHaven'tNoticedExactlyHowHardItReallyIsToParseASentenceWhenThe
WordsAreOnlySeparatedByCapitals?

Notice_how_much_easier_it_is_to_read_this_sentence_with_the_underscores
which_are_very_similar_to_blanks.

[QED :-]
-- 

	Geoff Kuenning   geoff@ITcorp.com   {hplabs,ihnp4}!trwrb!desint!geoff