Case sensitivity

[A. Lloyd Flanagan]

mwilson at the-wire.com (Mel Wilson) wrote in message news:<GQ6U+ks/KveM089yn at the-wire.com>...
> 
>    Not that I know, but:  If Python names were case
> insensitive, then Python's dictionaries.. the ones returned
> by `locals()` and `globals()` for instance.. would have to
> do case insensitive lookups.  This would put them out of
> sync with other dictionaries, notably the ones people might
> use in `exec .. in` statements or calls to `eval`.  Unless
> string comparisons were changed to be case-insensitive..
> 

Worse, it seems to me that the hash function for dictionary lookup
would have to be slower/more complex.  That has major performance
implications for Python, since so much of the 'plumbing' is
implemented as dictionary lookups.

OTOH, I like the idea of forbidding variable names that differ only in
case, seems to me it would eliminate silly mistakes and could be
enforced on the 'compile'.