Case-sensitivity: why -- or why not? (was Re: Damnation!)

[François Pinard]

neelk at brick.cswv.com (Neel Krishnaswami) écrit:

> Perhaps you should look at languages that are case-insensitive, and
> see if people have the problems you suspect they might? Large bodies
> of source code for Common Lisp, Scheme and Dylan are available under
> open-source licenses.  Furthermore, Dejanews has archives of all of these
> languages' newsgroups.  You can read the code for yourself and check the
> archives to see if anyone else has had problems with case-insensitivity.

Perhaps I should do that.  But perhaps as well, I do not have the free time
I would need to compile a thesis on this topic.  The fact that I do not
drive an extensive research does not automatically mean that my experience
and opinions are worthless.  I even dare to think that I did contribute to
free software in various ways, along all these years, without necessarily
having to resort to the usual academic means.  There are other ways.

> Suspicions are most easily dispelled/confirmed via evidence

The evidence of one is not necessarily the evidence of the other.  I'm grown
up enough to know that :-).  Some evidences are also more credible :-).

> and taking the trouble to do this has the pleasant side-effect that you
> can either cease expending effort worrying, or move directly to taking
> positive action to correct the problem.

I'm not sure I understand you fully.  My overall feeling is that our goal,
here, is more about _not_ correcting a false problem, than having to take
positive action for correcting a problem which might not have to be.

-- 
François Pinard   http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard