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Posted by Chung Leong on 12/23/05 05:27
Oli Filth wrote:
> I think the issue of case sensitivity/insensitivity is one where
> everyone just has to agree to disagree. It's one of those issues that
> everyone prefers what they're used to, and there's no fundamental
> arguments either way, just like for indent style.
Agreeing to disagree isn't a terribly good solution here, as it's a
zero-sum game. Case-sensitivity precludes using identifiers in
different cases to refer to the same thing, while case-insensitivity
makes it impossible to use identifiers in different cases to refer to
different things. Since I do neither, I don't feel strongly one way or
the other. If we forgo the "4 out of 5 dentists prefer..." style of
arguments though and look at the what each system allows, I think we
can come to some kind of a conclusion.
Case-sensitivity let you use identical tokens spelled in different
cases to refer to different things. I don't think I have heard a single
argument in favor of this practice, aside from an "oh, the Java folks
are doing it." Capitalization is a device usually used for emphasis and
conveying emotion. It's a poor choice for as a signifier, as it's not
easy to see in print and cannot be communicated at all vocally.
Case-insensitivity let you use identical tokens in different cases to
refer to the same thing. Is there any practical use of this? As I said,
capitalization is a device usually used for emphasis and conveying
emotion. A programmer could potentially use it to draw attention to
particular places in the code. For instance, I could see a convention
whereby a variable name is capitalized when its value is being altered.
Not a usage I'd promote, but intriguing nonetheless.
Thus, I would say that a case-insensitive language is marginally more
useful.
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