Explanation of "Case-sensitive"

Peter da Silva peter at ficc.uu.net
Mon Apr 24 23:37:51 AEST 1989


In article <13174 at dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU>, jskuskin at eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Jeffrey Kuskin) writes:
> Why was C specified this way?  A case-insensitive language puts no
> restrictions on source-file formatting:  symbolic constants can be
> all upper case, variables all lower case, functions mixed-case, etc.

Neither does a case-sensitive language. In fact, the draft Ferranti coding
standard for 'C' makes such a distinction. If you're consistent, you win.
If you're inconsistent, then you win (oh, I should have called it MyVar,
now shouldn't I?).

> The only difference comes at compile time when silly errors (IMHO)
> such as "mYvAR not declared" start to appear (when you *have* declared
> "myVar").

Why would you do that?

How about confusing "Ile", "lIe", and "IIe"? Silly errors.
-- 
Peter da Silva, Xenix Support, Ferranti International Controls Corporation.

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