On 09-11-2011 02:29, Daniel Murphy wrote:
There is always one backwards compatible solution:
We could make version identifiers case insensitive.
That's not backwards-compatible. What if someone out there is really
using Foo and fOO for two different things? I know this sounds
far-fetched, but the possibility is there.
It's a change from everywhere else in the language, but...
There is no 'correct' casing for os/architecture etc
windows vs Windows, linux vs Linux, x86 vs X86 are meaningless distinctions.
It's proper spelling of the titles of the architectures/OSs. I don't see
how this is not correct.
Invalid identifiers are _silently_ accepted.
eg.
version(Linux) {}
Would anybody ever _actually_ mean Linux here?
Maybe... they could have:
version (linux) { version (Linux); }
to fix the inconsistency that is in place now. ;)
Because it works on a is/is not defined basis, this is one case where case
sensitivity harms usability. You never get an error for messing up the
casing, unless you explicitly add a static assert in an else clause.
Very true. But you're supposed to do that anyway, as Walter pointed out
in a post to the druntime mailing list, because it aids portability.
Does anybody really define both 'MyVersion' and 'myVersion' and expect them
to do different things?
I think the inconsistency and the small addition to the spec are worth it to
have the compiler silently and automatically do the right thing, and remove
the impact of some incredibly inconsistent and arbirtary casing choices.
In general, I agree, but this would be a breaking change no matter how
you look at it. I'm not sure if that's a good idea.
- Alex
