Case sensitivity

[rzed]

Alex Martelli wrote:
> On Tuesday 25 February 2003 10:31 am, M.-A. Lemburg wrote:
>    ...
>> Think of it this way: you don't pay anything for the benefit
>> of using the software, so the net total is still a good buy.
>
> Sure, and this would still hold if ten other warts were introduced
> into Python just for fun.  Is this an argument for introducing them?
>
>
>> Seriously, I don't see the point in this discussion.
>
> Take it up with the people who started the thread, then kept
> calling me directly to answer in it, and are now keeping it alive
> by asserting things I consider false, such as the "fact" (?) that
> case sensitivity "enforces a convention" when it clearly does
> not.  I don't see the point in this thread existing at all, either,
> but there is always "a point" in indicating when assertions are
> counter-factual -- avoiding the risk that new readers, not
> familiar with the previous rounds of the same discussion, become
> erroneoneusly convinced of such falsehoods.
>
> No doubt this thread will peter out again eventually, as all
> things must, either when some people stop asserting things
> that just aren't so, or when others convince themselves that
> the confutations to the falsehoods have been established in
> a sufficiently clear manner, or simply grow too bored of the
> whole mess.  At that point, I believe no good at all will have
> been served, and much time and energy wasted, by the whole
> thread's existence.  <shrug> I didn't start the thread, and I
> don't think it's reasonable to demand that I let such beauties
> as that "enforcing" idea stand unchallenged to confuse and
> mislead new readers.
>

I didn't want to respond yet again to this thread, because, like you,
I think it's largely a waste of time and bandwidth. But I am the
person who asserted the "falsehood" you twice cited above, and I don't
regard this in a kindly light. I tried to explain to you before that
your interpretation of "enforce a convention" and my original
assertion were not the same. What I meant from the start was *not*
that case sensitivity in some way forces constants to be written in
upper case (which would enforce a convention in the sense you seem to
mean), but that, once written in whatever case, they could only be
referred to in the same case (the compiler enforcing -- not the
convention, but references to the objects following the same
convention in which they originated). You seem either to disregard the
point or to misconstrue it for some reason. I probably expressed it
badly. Almost certainly so, if you understood it to mean something
other than what I meant. However, what I meant to say, at least, is
not a falsehood, and it would be unjust to leave the impression that I
was trying for some reason to lie in what I said.

--
rzed