On 2014-02-24 08:09, John Walker wrote:
> Mixed case is industry standard? What industry, mainframe assembler, or C
> programming industry standard? Come on. This is just more C programmers
> trying to foist the mixed case abomination off onto the mainframe in order to
> make us conform to what they are used to. Honestly, it IS more error prone
> to have that ridiculous mixed case approach than mono-case. Upper or lower,
> I don't care which, but it DOES avoid more headaches. And the 'headaches'
> that are described for the pre-trained mixed-case readers is because of a
> normal need to de-train your mind from mixed case reading. I encountered the
> same situation when I first entered the mainframe area. That's normal.
> However, trying to make all mainframers, admittedly a small group now, to
> conform to you is a bit pushy, wouldn't you think?
> --------------------------------------------
>
This is the 21st Century. Deal with it! Ain't gonna go away.
I subscribe to a diachronic explanation. C arose from, or was
strongly influenced by, a culture of scientists, engineers,
and mathematicians who were accustomed to using single-character
symbols for brevity. When that vocabulary was exhausted, they
turned to multiple case, and Greek, and Hebrew. As an example,
there are:
G, the universal gravitational constant
g, the local acceleration of gravity
Even used in the same equation:
g = GM/r^2
(Note the implied multiplication, strongly precluding the use
of multiple-character symbols.)
When they turned to programming, they expected to be able to use
the conventions familiar in the classroom and in publication.
The other culture was formed by keypunches and display terminals
with majuscule-only character generator ROMs.
The favored case for UNIX was minuscule. But the Teletype 33KSR
was majuscule-only. Interestingly, thereare vestiges in the UNIX
documntation of a convention whereby if a user logged in using
only majuscule characters in the login sequence (user ID and
password), the terminal would be placed in "stty iuclc" mode,
translating majuscule to minuscule, the converse of the ISPF
(default ugh!) CAPS ON mode.
-- gil
