Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!purdue!decwrl!megatest!djones
From: djones@megatest.UUCP (Dave Jones)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: case sensitivity
Message-ID: <4402@goofy.megatest.UUCP>
Date: 22 Apr 89 05:00:41 GMT
References: <1989Apr21.194615.5344@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: Megatest Corporation, San Jose, Ca
Lines: 26

From article <1989Apr21.194615.5344@utzoo.uucp>, by henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer):
> In article <13159@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU> jskuskin@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Jeffrey Kuskin) writes:
>>    Why is C case-sensitive? ...
> 
> Why not?  The real question is why things should be case-*in*sensitive.


And the real answer is... (ta ta!)

... so you can talk to other engineers about the program without
saying, "The first A is capitalized, and the S in Set, and ... no not
that one..."

Somewhere or another I heard of the "telephone test" for programs.
I'm sorry I can't credit the author.  The test, which is for judging the
self-documentation properties of a program, is whether or not you
can read it to someone over the telephone, and in doing so convey the
meaning of the program.

I determined then, that if I ever write my dream-language, it's identifiers
at least will pass the telephone test.  The language will not only
not distinguish case, but underscores will not be significant
in indentifiers.  Of course, there would be a way to distinguish a
canonical spelling for an identifier, for purposes of external linkage,
probably the way it was spelled in the declaration.  And there would
need to be a ctags-like program which knew about the convention.