Common Lisp offers a choice: coercing to uppercase is the
default, but you can coerce it to lowercase, or preserve
the case (there's also "invert", which I'm not sure when
I need.)
Recent Allegro Common Lisp comes with two lisp images:
new, case-sensitive version (i.e. preserving case by default) and
legacy version (i.e. fold to uppercase by default).
I feel even CL-world is moving towards case-sensitive language.
Sticking to case-insensitivity without offering choice seems
to me only to drag historical burdens. As I mentioned, it is
pretty easy (and has been already done) for implementations
to provide an optional case-insensitive reader to load legacy
code.
--shiro
From: John Cowan <cowan_at_ccil.org>
Subject: Re: [r6rs-discuss] [Formal] Scheme should not be changed to be case sensitive.
Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2006 00:23:51 -0500
> Arthur A. Gleckler scripsit:
>
> > If we change the case sensitivity of the language, users will have to
> > look carefully at every identifier and every use of string->symbol to
> > port a program to an R6RS implementation. That is onerous and
> > unnecessary. And the long history of the language working the way it
> > does should count for something in simple decision like this.
>
> I still favor case-sensitivity (I notice that R5RS-ish Schemes with
> case-sensitivity are common), but I think if we are to continue with
> case-insensitivity, we must also adopt Common Lisp's |...| convention
> for weird atoms. Note however that Unicode case-folding is, broadly
> speaking, to lower case, so foo and |foo| would be the same, and
> different from |FOO| (whereas in CL, foo and |FOO| are the same
> and it is |foo| that is distinct).
>
> --
> John Cowan http://ccil.org/~cowan cowan_at_ccil.org
> Economists were put on this planet to make astrologers look good.
> --Leo McGarry
>
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Received on Thu Nov 16 2006 - 01:36:32 UTC