Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!cmcl2!phri!marob!cowan
From: cowan@marob.MASA.COM (John Cowan)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Just Wondering
Message-ID: <621@marob.MASA.COM>
Date: 22 Apr 89 23:49:47 GMT
References: <17037@mimsy.UUCP> <12481@lanl.gov>
Reply-To: cowan@marob.masa.com (John Cowan)
Distribution: na
Organization: ESCC  New York City
Lines: 18

In article <12481@lanl.gov> jlg@lanl.gov (Jim Giles) writes:
>Ah, but do you intend to imply that "BecAUSe peopLE arE CaSE senSITive,
>as YOU CAn noW see" has a different _MEANING_ from "Because people are
>case sensitive, as you can now see?"  The fact is that most people are
>_NOT_ case sensitive with respect to the _MEANINGS_ of the words.  So,
>computer languages probably shouldn't let case effect the meaning either.


Well, sometimes.  DEC is a computer company, but "Dec" is an abbreviation
for December (credit: >Programming Pearls<); "Polish" and "polish" are
actually pronounced differently, as well as having different meanings
(credit: The Black Widowers);
"Billy" and "BillY" are probably distinct e-mail names.

NASA would look pretty odd as nasa, too.  My personal feeling, for what
it's worth, is that ALL UPPER CASE words should be distinct from all-lower-
case words and MiXeD-CaSE-wORDs.  In this scheme "foo" and "Foo" and "FoO"
mean "foo", but "FOO" means "FOO" and is distinct from the others.