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From: Frank Heckenbach
Subject: Upper/lower case in identifiers
Date: 11 Sep 2004, 20:02:15

Waldek Hebisch wrote:

> Frank Heckenbach wrote:
> > Waldek Hebisch wrote:
> > 
> > > the spelling. It is natural to take scope rules into account when 
> > > warning about capitalization, but that requires extra work. 
> > 
> > It may be natural for some. I actually prefer it the way it is, i.e.
> > I prefer to use the same spelling (capitalization) throughout. So if
> > you or someone else implements the other way (which is indeed more
> > work), it should at least be optional.
>
> I belive that capitalization is meaningfull for people.

I don't really. In natural language, capitalization is used as a
help in reading (used differently in different languages), but it
does not carry meaning itself (e.g., a text written in all-caps
still has the same meaning).

In my experience, variations in capitalization in Pascal code arise
mostly in the following cases:

- Typos -- good when warned

- Less strict used of capitalization (e.g., parts of the code having
  all-lowercase identifiers) -- also good when warned (if you care
  about capitalization at all, otherwise turn off the warning
  anyway).

- Different arbitrary choices (e.g. `DOS' (acronym) vs. `Dos'
  (everyday way)). Still it doesn't really carry meaning.

- Short identifiers such as `x' vs. `X'. These names are not
  actually meaningful anyway.

> So it is
> natural that different meanings needs different capitalizations. Of
> course, some persons may wish warning for re-using an identifier
> with different meaning (or as compromise, a warning when meaning
> is different enough to require different capitalization :)). But 
> IMHO the main use of `-Widentifier-case' is to ensure that standard 
> (case insensitive) interpretation coincides with case sensitive 
> one.

Which case-sensitive one? It's Pascal code, and Pacal is
case-insensitive. If you mean translating Pascal code to C or
another case-sensitive language, this may become an issue, but
certainly one of the least ones.

Frank

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