Re: FN-FORUM: C#

date posted 24th October 2003 20:56

On Friday 24 Oct 2003 10:16 am, Andy Macnaughton-Jones wrote:
> I've never really understood why people want to have case-sensitive
> languages. In "written english" terms, it means that "House" is
> different to "house" is different to "HOUSE".=20

It can be very useful. It's conventional in C programming for instance
that macros are #defined in all capitals. Hence if you are looking=20
through some code and you see MAX(a,b) you know it's a macro
and if you see max(a,b) it's a function. [1]

Discussion of macros and functions, using the max example, here:
http://www.experts-exchange.com/Programming/Programming_Languages/C/Q_207=
31126.html

In file naming conventions, case is again useful. When installing Un*x
software one tends to look for a README or a Readme file and it's=20
easy to spot the capitalised filenames in a listing.

Computationally, case insensitive string handling is a waste of resources=
,
and a pain to implement.

ISTR reading that the main reason DOS was case-insensitive was to=20
make sure it didn't infringe Unix copyright - similarly with the forward-=
slash
/ backward-slash mess that programmers have to contend with.

IMLTHO proper growed-up computer languages are case-sensitive, case-
insensitive languages are probably BASIC derivatives, and we all=20
know what the B stands for, don't we?

[1] Unless you're the C programming tutor on a Music Technology course
at a certain Northern University in which case you define "max" as a macr=
o
which of course totally buggers things up when you want to, say, import a
bit of code that has a struct with a member called "max", like C programm=
ers
the world over have been doing since K&R first published. Duh.