Xref: utzoo comp.lang.c:17846 comp.lang.misc:2855
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!think!barmar
From: barmar@think.COM (Barry Margolin)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c,comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: case sensitivity
Message-ID: <39680@think.UUCP>
Date: 24 Apr 89 18:49:46 GMT
References: <13159@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU> <1989Apr21.194615.5344@utzoo.uucp> <10182@socslgw.csl.sony.JUNET>
Sender: news@think.UUCP
Reply-To: barmar@kulla.think.com.UUCP (Barry Margolin)
Followup-To: comp.lang.misc
Organization: Thinking Machines Corporation, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 38

This discussion is losing its specificity to C, so I've directed
followups to comp.lang.misc.

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.

So long as such things are not used haphazardly, case differences can
be useful.  For instance, in a language that doesn't permit some kind
of delimiter (e.g. underscores or hyphens) in identifiers, it's
possible that there could be two procedures named ReAdjustOneToken and
ReadJustOneToken (I know, I'm stretching); case is being used as a
delimiter, and it's completely obvious which one is which (but
readjustonetoken would be a poor name for either).

At a previous place of employment, case distinctions were often part
of some developers' or groups' programming conventions.  For instance,
parameters to top-level procedures might be named P_xxx, while
parameters to internal procedures would be named p_xxx.  Another group
used uppercase prefixes and suffixes to indicate data type; e.g. fooP
would be a pointer to a foo (we used PL/I, which doesn't have typed
pointers), but foop would be something else (and foopP would be a
pointer to a foop).

I've used both case-sensitive languages and case-insensitive
languages.  They both have their advantages and disadvantages.  Case
distinction, if used carefully, can be a good tool.  It's easy to
ignore when you aren't concerned about the attribute it represents,
and easy to notice when you are.

Barry Margolin
Thinking Machines Corp.

barmar@think.com
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