Subject:
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Re: Case-sensitivity in programming languages
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.publish
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Date:
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Thu, 18 Feb 1999 14:19:11 GMT
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Viewed:
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1678 times
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There's one problem with the 'shorter to save storage space' issue:
COBOL is much older than C. I believe COBOL was the second compiled
language (right after FORTRAN).
C came quite a bit later, after a significant amount of improvement in
the price::space relationship.
COBOL is extremely wordy. C is terse.
Steve
On Thu, 18 Feb 1999 04:46:31 GMT, "Earls HouseHold"
<brandone@mounet.com> wrote:
> While the discussion to Case or not to Case is very interesting and I hope
> it continues, I would like inject something at this point. A bit of history
> if you will. Way back when ( Mr. Peabody please set the Wayback Machine for
> the cusp between main frames and minis) we used machinery that did not
> always have uppercase and lowercase we didn't have to make this decision.
> Then someone in their wisdom interduced the CRT ( commonly called the video
> terminal by some ) we had to make a choice because the old software didn't
> know what Case was and cost to much to fix ( well it ain't broke! AND YOU
> WANT TO SPENT HOW MUCH TO FIX IT??!! ). Those older languages became case
> ignorers and newer ones used everthing they could. This is were this all
> started. In the early days, you worried about using to much of everything.
> Have you ever wondered why C command are so short and cryptic. Lack of
> usable character space in the file name system for one. Another, you save 7
> to 8 bits for each character you don't use, that is, if your using ASCII and
> not RTTY, in which case you only save 5 bits, but then if your using RTTY
> you lack a lot of characters in your alphabet and really can't use Case any
> way. Now .... Huh!
> (Now its time go, Mr. Earls.)
> Who are you guys?
> (We're here to help you. Let's just give you this nice little injection
> ...)
> Ouch! I'm feeeling .... sleeepyyyy.......
>
> Roy
>
>
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Case-sensitivity in programming languages
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| Steve Bliss wrote in message <36cc20bc.5396372@lu...et.com>... (...) This is true, Steve, but even COBOL used all caps on the 80 column cards. Most of the early keypunch machines had only caps. Did you ever wonder why the standard VDT line length (...) (25 years ago, 19-Feb-99, to lugnet.publish)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: Case-sensitivity in programming languages
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| (...) Well, I dunno, maybe those languages wouldn't be severely hampered by case- insensitivity. I always thought that was the reason they were designed to be case-sensitive. (...) OK, yes, that's certainly a readability restriction. What I meant (...) (25 years ago, 18-Feb-99, to lugnet.publish)
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