Damnation!

[Moshe Zadka]

On Sat, 20 May 2000, Hamish Lawson wrote:

> If case insensitivity was introduced, I propose that there
> should be a command-line switch to revert to case sensivity for
> backwards compatibility

Python 3000 will *not* be strictly backwards compatible: think of it as a
new language, with roots in today's Python. And trust me, you don't want
this switch. What if you download a module? Is it meant for
case-sensitivity or case-insensitivity? What if you download two modules, 
one wishing for c-s and one for c-i? Would you mark each module? And what
about the interfaces between modules? And "from foo import *"?

Having a delicate syntactic decision decided by a run-time switch
effectively creates two different languages. Either one will dominate, in
which case we can mandate that behaviour from the beginning, or the two
will flourish, which means that the Python community will be split. 

--
Moshe Zadka <moshez at math.huji.ac.il>
http://www.oreilly.com/news/prescod_0300.html
http://www.linux.org.il -- we put the penguin in .com