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From: c08_dta7@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU (TA7)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: case sensitivity
Message-ID: <1562@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU>
Date: 24 Apr 89 21:25:01 GMT
References: <13159@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU> <1989Apr21.194615.5344@utzoo.uucp> <10182@socslgw.csl.sony.JUNET>
Reply-To: c08_dta7@jhunix.UUCP (TA7)
Organization: The Johns Hopkins University - HCF
Lines: 25

In article <10182@socslgw.csl.sony.JUNET> diamond@csl.sony.junet (Norman Diamond) writes:

>Come on Henry, you wouldn't want to have to distinguish identifiers named
>myFunc and myfunc, when reading someone else's code.  If you don't want to
>have myFunc map onto myfunc (i.e. not be synonymous) then suggest a require-
>ment that all occurences of an identifier be consistent in case, but it is
>silly to permit two distinct identifiers to differ only in case.

Making C case sensitive has at least two important advantages:
  1- Compilation is faster because there is no need to map upper case
     characters to lower case characters, or vice-versa.
  2- If the compiler is case insensitive then many Pascal programmers will
     create such horrors as: INT MAIN(INT ARGC, CHAR *ARGV[]) {}

  Also, there is the controvertial advantage: One may have a
constant with the same name as a variable or a function.

I think the main reason for it is the general philosophy of C: You
assume the programmer knows what he is doing. You give him tools that
can be used to create a mess, and assume that the programmer is smart
enough to be able to use this power to create efficient programs. As a
result of this philosophy, there is no comparison between the size or
efficiency of C programs with their Pascal counterparts.

  Mamdouh Maher