On Tue, Feb 25, 2014 at 4:40 PM, Felix Lange <f...@twurst.com> wrote: > Sorry for hijacking this discussion. > No problem. There are no stupid questions (but see the famous "cluelessness" demotivational poster).
> Why are system names case sensitive at all? > Wouldn't it be more sane to just make them case-insensitive? > > It is more complicated to perform case-insensitive file search > on a case-sensitive filesystem, of course. > Well, in practice, people either use symbols, that are downcased, or strings, with a lowercase convention. Therefore, system names are case sensitive, but there is a strong case-converting bias towards lowercase. This both makes it hard to involuntarily stray from the common practical case, yet possible to those who really care to. Should non-lowercase strings be either forbidden or case-converted? That's a backward incompatible change that would need to be tested with cl-test-grid before it's committed — and even then might affect unpublished or proprietary code by other users. So far, this legacy system (inherited from Dan Barlow's ASDF) has worked fine, and I don't see what is to be gained with this incompatible change. I'm not the maintainer anymore, though, so it's not my decision to make. —♯ƒ • François-René ÐVB Rideau •Reflection&Cybernethics• http://fare.tunes.org A student who changes the course of history is probably taking an exam.
