Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!hc!lanl!jlg
From: jlg@lanl.gov (Jim Giles)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Just Wondering
Message-ID: <12564@lanl.gov>
Date: 24 Apr 89 17:41:42 GMT
References: <2006@quanta.eng.ohio-state.edu>
Distribution: na
Organization: Los Alamos National Laboratory
Lines: 19

From article <2006@quanta.eng.ohio-state.edu>, by rob@raksha.eng.ohio-state.edu (Rob Carriere):
> And from the other side of the bistable multivibrator, since there are
> people who like this idea, since people who don't can just not use it,
> and since C has a spirit of live and let live, why should it not be
> case sensitive?  Is it hurting you?


It hurts me in two ways:

1)  My job often requires me to work-on, debug, or rewrite other people's
    code.  If the other person distinguishes "myvar" from "myVar" and
    several similar cases, this causes considerable heartburn.

2)  Since C distinguishes case, I can't use it to help the readability
    of code by EMPHASIZING parts that I consider important.

Fortunately, for both these cases, C has yet to become a really common
language in the big computer environment.  Even UNIX based supers mostly
use Fortran-like languages for production.