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Posted by tony on 12/23/05 11:30
Gordon Burditt wrote:
> >> >> For God's sake WHY! What problem existed in the
> >> >> case-insensitive world that needed to be fixed?
>
> From my point of view, the case-sensitive world existed
> first.
I disagree. The first computers allowed nothing but upper case, but
when lower case became available neither the operating systems nor the
compilers cared which case was used because they were totally
insensitive. None of the mainframe, mini or micro computers that I have
ever worked on has been case-sensitive.
> >> > Ask Dennis Ritchie.
> >>
> >> No, I'm asking you. What problem existed in the case-insensitive world
> >> that could ONLY be solved by introducing case-sensitivity?
>
> What problem existed in the case-sensitive world that could only be
> solved by introducing case-insensitivity?
Your question is rubbish as computers were case-insensitive to begin
with. Case sensitivity only arose because of a stupid mistake by those
bungling unix programmers.
> >I don't know, and don't really care. It's a pretty pointless
> >discussion. Languages that are case sensitive are not going to change
> >because a minority of programmers dislikes that feature.
>
> Ok, here's one problem that case-insensitivity has that case-sensitivity
> doesn't: determine whether or not two characters are the same
> (except possibly for case) for all characters in ISO 10646, on a
> machine with a 64k address space. Do all countries even AGREE on
> what character codes correspond to 'a' except for case? It would
> be VERY BAD for two variable names to represent the same variable
> in some countries and not in others. How often will it be necessary
> for this software to be updated? (Of course, C wimps out on this
> by not allowing most of those characters in variable names anyway.)
I am not talking about any character string that can be entered by any
user in any language, I am talking about what the language will allow
for function names and variable names. I think you will find this to be
more restrictive, therefore less of a problem when case-insensitive
matching is required.
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