Re: Case sensitivity in programming languages.


"ImOk" <jon.macaroni@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1153959111.694621.115960@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Let me clarify my position. I am not taking a position. I was just
simply stating why many languages are case sensitive. The fact that
it's to force the programmer to write English prose is just BS
secondary thinking. The real reason, it's more efficient to parse.

I started on mainframe COBOL in the70s, and due to the limited character set
there was no lower case. When I moved to mini-computers (Data General,
Hewlett Packard) in the 80s they allowed both upper and lower case but NEVER
introduced case-sensitivity. It was possible to write COBOL and JCL in
either case and the computer didn't care. This proves that case-sensitivity
was not introduced on grounds of "efficiency" as the computer could
automatically convert everything to the same case with no loss in
performance.

Having case-sensitive software causes more problems that it solves,
therefore it is EVIL!

--
Tony Marston
http://www.tonymarston.net
http://www.radicore.org


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