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

[Xtian]

> 6. Any wide-spread computer language in use today uses case-sensitive
> identifiers. Oth, the only case - insensitive language i know of
(pascal)
> doesn't produce any real-world projects and even has it's case-
sensitive
> followup (Modula-2), by the same author (Niklaus Wirth). Lisp is
another
> case - i didn't use it for some time already, but as i remember, the
> standard common lisp had case-sensitivity, and the syntax of the
language
> allows for totally different naming schemes (with hyphens, for
example).
>

Sorry - just to clarify one point... PL/SQL (in Oracle) is quite a
widely used programming language which is case insensitive, although
the case in the code is maintained by the system. In fact, pretty much
all SQL is case insensitive as far as I know.

That said, I agree with the point Martijn has been trying to make in
this thread. When I was writing a lot of PL/SQL, I was careful about
being consistent with my case, as well as with my indentation. In
Python, a design decision has been made to *enforce* consistent use of
indentation, based on the idea that this makes sure everyone follows
the same rules and renders code easier to read. This decision seems to
have been accidentally made with case, but for the same reasons as for
indentation I think that this way is more correct.

(All the natural language analogies seem to be red-herringish, to me.
They can be argued either way, depending whether you're for or against.)

Xtian


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