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From: ddb@ns.network.com (David Dyer-Bennet)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Just Wondering
Message-ID: <1314@ns.network.com>
Date: 24 Apr 89 21:12:21 GMT
References: <13159@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU> <10088@smoke.BRL.MIL>
Reply-To: ddb@ns.UUCP (David Dyer-Bennet)
Organization: Terrabit Software
Lines: 28

In article <10088@smoke.BRL.MIL> gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn) writes:
:In article <13159@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU> jskuskin@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Jeffrey Kuskin) writes:
:>    Why is C case-sensitive?
:
:It makes programs considerably more readable, and expands the available
:name space considerably.
:
:Is there some reason C should NOT be case sensitive?

Well, I've seen quite a few bugs that were finally determined to be caused
by programmers looking at code with identifiers with the same spelling but
different casing, and thinking they were the same.  I've found I got over
that MOST of the time, and remember to check for it the rest of the time;
but it means that when "thinking c" I have to think differently than when
I'm doing most other reading tasks, which makes things epsilon much harder.

It also enforces rules about casing of identifiers, so the same identifier
ALWAYS looks the same, which is clearly good.

How DO people feel about identifiers differing only in casing?  Is this
ok?  To be COMPLETELY avoided?  To be avoided except in a very few
well-understood conventional cases?

-- 
David Dyer-Bennet, ddb@terrabit.fidonet.org, or ddb@ns.network.com
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