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From: franka@mmintl.UUCP (Frank Adams)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Six, no, seven, no, make that eight, mono, no, dual, wait...
Message-ID: <2501@mmintl.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 20-Oct-87 20:50:43 EDT
Article-I.D.: mmintl.2501
Posted: Tue Oct 20 20:50:43 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 24-Oct-87 16:34:42 EDT
References: <1132@gilsys.UUCP> <1246@bsu-cs.UUCP> <6543@brl-smoke.ARPA> <11599@labrea.STANFORD.EDU> <8997@mimsy.UUCP>
Reply-To: franka@mmintl.UUCP (Frank Adams)
Organization: Multimate International, E. Hartford, CT.
Lines: 24

In article <8997@mimsy.UUCP> chris@mimsy.UUCP (Chris Torek) writes:
>In article <104@aimt.UUCP> breck@aimt.UUCP (Robert Breckinridge Beatie)
>asked:
>>>>Hmmm...  why is a 6 character limit necessary in any environment?
>
>In article <8992@mimsy.UUCP> I answered that the limit is left over
>from FORTRAN.

FORTRAN may be responsible for the 6 character limit, but it is not to blame
for the mono-case requirement.  FORTRAN's restriction to mono-case was an
accurate reflection of the hardware available at the time -- not so much the
computers themselves, though some of them did not support lower case -- but
the other devices.  Keypunches, printers, and communications devices (some
derived from teletypes) initially did not support dual case, or supported it
only with great difficulty.

Things could be worse.  BASIC, as originally defined, supported one (upper
case) letter and an optional digit.  And it doesn't have the excuse that
nobody knew better at the time.  It's hard to imagine a two-character
standard emerging, but four has a certain grisly plausibility to it.
-- 

Frank Adams                           ihnp4!philabs!pwa-b!mmintl!franka
Ashton-Tate          52 Oakland Ave North         E. Hartford, CT 06108