Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!purdue!bu-cs!buengc!bph
From: bph@buengc.BU.EDU (Blair P. Houghton)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Just Wondering
Message-ID: <2617@buengc.BU.EDU>
Date: 21 Apr 89 12:25:59 GMT
References: <13159@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU>
Reply-To: bph@buengc.bu.edu (Blair P. Houghton)
Followup-To: comp.lang.c
Distribution: na
Organization: Boston Univ. Col. of Eng.
Lines: 32

In article <13159@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU> jskuskin@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Jeffrey Kuskin) writes:
>A "I was just wondering" question:
>
>    Why is C case-sensitive?  I suppose it allows the

1.  26 letters and ten numbers are not enough for all the names you
use.  Try looking at some old IBM 370 assembler code sometime, if
you can get around the hash-table program-naming system they forced
on programmers... (geee-yuck!)

2.  Huminz iz not cumpooterz.  We like it that way, and we make the
silly microchips do what WE ask.  You get the same sort of thing
in a PI/grad-student relationship, too (urf!.. murfle... okay, leggo.
Sorry... forget I mentioned the PI... :)

3.  Be glad it's not the whole of the APL character set.  Imagine
six kinds of Oh's, and more control-keys than an emacs engine.

4.  It goes along with the generality, modularity, and uninhibitionist
attitude of C.  I think there's more than one way to get the entirety
of ascii into your code as parts of identifiers.  I'm not the
pathologue to catalogue such things, however.  (Where's Andy Koenig
when you need him? 2x:-)

5.  BeCaUsE.

				--Blair
				  "Well, that's the reason I
				   grew up on.  You can relate,
				   can't you?  Whaddaya mean,
				   this ain't Group?  I been coming
				   here for weeks!"