Re: New Book: The School of Niklaus Wirth

mikael@pobox.com writes:
> humans tend to recognize names that differ solely in case without problems


Humans also recognise abbreviated names, nicknames, names with
spaces in them...


> Imagine that your mails, delivered via postal service, starts to
> bounce because you'd accidentally written "main Street" rather than
> "Main Street" (or the postal worker thinks you've written "main"
> rather than "Main")...


(1) The postal service has a lot more to worry about than
case differences. What if you wrote "Main St."? Would you want
mail addressed to "Mick Lyngvig" to bounce?


(2) A mathematician would be very surprised to find that "n" and "N"
are treated as the *same* symbol.


On the other hand, if your compiler is going to be case-sensitive,
don't do what one compiler did and convert all error messages
(including identifier names) to UPPER CASE!


Martin


Martin.Ward@durham.ac.uk http://www.dur.ac.uk/martin.ward/ Erdos number: 4

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