From: Stu <stu@...>
Date: 2010-12-03T07:06:32+09:00
Subject: Re: newbie: variable names

I worked with macromedia( now adobe) lingo which was case insensitive
pre internet days. Though it was a "feature" no one used it. That
language it was more common to use hungerian notation for naming.

The token parser would have to have some extra checks and some
conversions but once turned into byte code and cached the program
should run just as fast. in c a char is still sizeof(char) and an
integer is still sizeof(int).

I would imagine the 'design decision' would have more to do with
creating something that is useful as opposed to making a feature which
though interesting would never be used in a real world application.

On Thu, Dec 2, 2010 at 2:29 PM, Doug Stone <dstone@concerro.com> wrote:
> Yes, thanks: I was asking why, when designing a language, why make identifiers case sensitive.  One list member responded that there would be an extra overhead involved in equating, say, aVariableName with avariablename.  Overhead considerations aside, I think it would be desirable to have identifiers be case-insensitive... ?
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jeremy Bopp [mailto:jeremy@bopp.net]
> Sent: Thursday, December 02, 2010 9:24 AM
> To: ruby-talk ML
> Subject: Re: newbie: variable names
>
> On 12/2/2010 11:07 AM, Doug Stone wrote:
>> hello,
>> i have my first (of what may be many) really dumb questions: why is it advantageous to be able to distinguish aVariableName from avariablename?
>
> Are you asking why identifiers are case-sensitive?
>
> -Jeremy
>
>