Case sensitivity

[Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters]

"Tim Churches" <tchur at optushome.com.au> wrote previously:
|>     While consistency in
|>     representation aids legibility of programs, allowing minor
|>     variations makes remembering terms easier for most programmers.
|That describes the behaviour of FOO but not why it behaves that way. Or,
|as my seven-year old puts it: "In the FOO language, why are differences
|in case permitted but not other differences in name representation?

Just let your 7-year old know that FOO generalizes the dimensions of
syntagmatic freedom characteristic of English orthography. :-)

It really does, btw.  For example, a contract or legal brief cover page
(at least in USA) is typically in ALLCAPS.  And yet the terms on that
cover refer to exactly the same things as lowercase of sentence case
versions in the main text.  Similarly with tax forms.  And English
generally uses sentence case, even though it changes the precise
spelling of words depending on sentence position.  And SHOUTING on the
usenet is still a kind of shouting.  But in none of these cases is a cat
a mat.

But then, the original FOO characterization already said as much :-).

Yours, Lulu...

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