Explanation of "Case-sensitive"

Eriks A. Ziemelis eriks at cadnetix.COM
Tue Apr 25 01:58:10 AEST 1989


First off, "Why is C case sensitive?", here's my partial guess. As stated
in the "bible", page ix: "C was originally designed for and implemented
on the UNIX* operating system..." Well funsters, we all know how UNIX 
command shells work. It would have been ugly: get into VI, get into append
or insert, cap lock keys, type C code, <esc>, uncap lock, VI command,
cap lock, and on and on. Oh yeah, don't forget to un-cap lock after
you get out of VI, those UNIX commands tend to be in lower case \'-)

As someone else pointed out, debugging someone elses code would be a 
joy. MyVar == mYvAR could make life ugly for someone that doesn't
search for vars in the source case insensitive.

As for personal preference, I want case sensitive. This way, I can
have multiple versions of the same function in code/library, same
calling sequence, each one tweeked internally for debug/test purposes:
foo1() is the released version, Foo1() is test version 1, FOO1() test
version2...

In article <738 at redsox.UUCP> campbell at redsox.UUCP (Larry Campbell) writes:
>
>It is NOT a mistake.  Why do you insist that it is?  Why is it so hard
>for you to spell your identifiers correctly?  Why do you want to spell
>the same identifier many different ways?  What possible advantage would
>this convey?
>-- 

What he said!


Eriks A. Ziemelis


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