Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ncar!ico!ism780c!haddock!suitti
From: suitti@haddock.ima.isc.com (Stephen Uitti)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: case sensitivity
Message-ID: <12911@haddock.ima.isc.com>
Date: 2 May 89 20:02:48 GMT
References: <1989Apr21.194615.5344@utzoo.uucp> <4402@goofy.megatest.UUCP> <752@acorn.co.uk> <10193@socslgw.csl.sony.JUNET>
Reply-To: suitti@haddock.ima.isc.com (Stephen Uitti)
Organization: Interactive Systems, Boston
Lines: 39

In article <10193@socslgw.csl.sony.JUNET> diamond@csl.sony.junet (Norman Diamond) writes:
>In article <752@acorn.co.uk> enevill@acorn.co.uk (Edward Nevill) writes:
>>I do have a
>>problem with people who write mixed case library functions for case sensitive
>>languages, eg. Mac C systems.
>>FUNCTION GetCursor(cursorID: INTEGER) : CursHandle;
>>...
>Mac C takes this?  That must be some C compiler!

You tranlate it to (ansi prototype form):
CursHandle GetCursor(int cursorID);
where CursHandle is a typedef somewhere.  There is a paragraph in
the LightSpeed C (LSC) documentation on how to do this.

>>I continually have to look up the manual to find the
>>correct case. This is a pain.
>
>Well, if it's really a Pascal compiler, then you DON'T have to look up
>the correct spelling, because Pascal is case insensitive.

The Mac was originally a Pascal machine.  C came later.  C for
the Mac (LSC, for example) used Inside Macintosh for all
definitions.  No real attempt was made to translate Inside Mac to
C as a document.  Since C is case sensitive, and since Inside Mac
is pretty consistent, the library is case sensitive.  Oh well.
It is historical.  I prefer the way they did it to making
everything upper case (or even all lower case).  Since I don't
use the Mac's silly case convension in my code, one can tell if
it is a Mac-defined routine or call or something of my own at a
glance.  This is similar to the practice some people use with
Pascal: upper case for keywords, etc.

Even with this constant translation nonsense, C's reduced
restrictiveness (compared to Pascal) makes it a better language
for serious work on the Mac.  I know people who use both.  I know
people who use lisp too.  I don't know what language is used at
MicroSoft, though I'm told horror stories about it.

Stephen.