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Yet Another Case Question

Erik Max Francis max at alcyone.com
Sat Feb 22 23:21:21 EST 2003 
"David Mertz, Ph.D." wrote:

>  - If a language were case-insensitive, users would use absurdly mixed
>    case variables, e.g.  "maXImUMCoLumnS".  This is just factually
>    false--many millions of lines of code in existing case-insensitive
>    languages fail to show such a problem.

Sure, people won't deliberately use bizarre choices of mixed case except
to deliberately prove a point, but it seems undeniable that allowing
case insensitivity _will_ result in different people using different
capitalization conventions.  To use your example, some will write
`maximumcolumns', some will write `maximumColumns', and some will write
`MaximumColumns'.  This is, needless to say, obnoxious.  I don't think
you can really argue against this point, since the case insensitive
languages I've been exposed to one sees it over and over again.

>  - Case-sensitivity allows conventions such as allcaps CONSTANTS.  
>    Such
>    conventions are indeed good... and are widely used in
>    case-insensitive languages as well.

But the convention is much weaker if anyone can write them as
`constants', thus diluting their usefulness as a convention.  It's not
as strong a point, but it still opens itself up to variation -- and that
variation is inevitable, unless you institute draconian style guide
which amount to enforcing case sensitivity in the first place.

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