Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!iuvax!purdue!decwrl!decvax!ima!cfisun!lakart!dg
From: dg@lakart.UUCP (David Goodenough)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: case sensitivity
Message-ID: <516@lakart.UUCP>
Date: 27 Apr 89 14:01:12 GMT
References: <1320@ns.network.com>
Organization: Lakart Corporation, Newton, MA
Lines: 43

From article <1320@ns.network.com>, by ddb@ns.network.com (David Dyer-Bennet):
F In article <1989Apr21.194615.5344@utzoo.uucp> henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes:
O :In article <13159@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU> jskuskin@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Jeffrey Kuskin) writes:
O :>    Why is C case-sensitive? ...
L :
- :Why not?  The real question is why things should be case-*in*sensitive.
I :Uppercase and lowercase are different in appearance and in English usage;
N :why should they be synonymous in a programming language?
E 
W .....  Also, in text ALL CAPS is often used for
S emphasis, without confusing anybody about which words are meant.

Precisely. That's why one convention _IS_ to use uppercase for manifest
constants, and lower case for most everything else:

#define		SIZE		64

char  string[SIZE];

etc. etc. etc. etc.

> Casing rules in English are generally formal, not substantive, and
> therefore I consider case to be essentially not significant in normal
> English usage.

Granted, they would have very little effect on the comprehensibility of
the printed matter, but in a companion posting I'll show that the rules
are important. As Rahul Dhesi pointed out:

	eNGliSh iS A CASe seNSiTive lANguAgE

This can be read, but I'll bet it doesn't read _QUITE_ as fast as

	English is a case sensitive language.

(Food for thought - coments welcome) Perhaps _THAT'S_ why we capitalise
for emphasis - it creates a tiny "slow down" thus drawing attention to
the text we want to emphasize.
-- 
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