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

[Michael Hudson]

"Neil Hodgson" <neilh at scintilla.org> writes:

>    Some people have been using a=A(). Even me. But is this something that
> you really feel should be encouraged? Or is it a source of ambiguity and
> potential misunderstanding.

Well, I'm a mathematician.  To me x and X just ARE different variables
(eg. X could be a topological space, and x a point of that space).

I think that case-insensitivity reduces the expressiveness of the
language for no particular gain.  But then as I said above, I just see
X and x (or A and a, or Var and VAR, ...) as different.

I do find it hard to believe that if you are trying to teach people to
program, a task of no small subtlety, case-sensitivity will be a
show-stopper.  I have no evidence either way ... but this is Usenet
<wink>.

Cheers,
M.

-- 
  Ya, ya, ya, except ... if I were built out of KSR chips, I'd
  be running at 25 or 50 MHz, and would be wrong about ALMOST
  EVERYTHING almost ALL THE TIME just due to being a computer!
                                              -- Tim Peters, 30 Apr 97