Databases
StackOverflow2013
Postsdbo
POWhat's the benefit of case-sensitivity in a program language?
 

Note that there are some explanatory texts on larger screens.

plurals
  1. POWhat's the benefit of case-sensitivity in a program language?
    primarykey
    data
    text
    <blockquote> <p><strong>Possible Duplicate:</strong><br> <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/521349/is-there-any-advantage-of-being-a-case-sensitive-programming-language">Is there any advantage of being a case-sensitive programming language?</a> </p> </blockquote> <p>My first programming experiences where with the Basic family (MSX Basix, Q-basic, VB). These are all not case-sensitive. Now, it might be because of these first experiences, but I've never grasped the benefit of a language being case sensitive. On the contrary, I think it is a source of unneeded overhead and bugs, and it still annoys me when I use e.g. Java or C. </p> <p>Now, I just read on Clojure (a Lisp-dialect) and noticed - to my surprise - that one of the differences with Lisp is <a href="http://clojure.org/lisps" rel="nofollow noreferrer">case-sensitivity</a>. </p> <p><strong>So: what is actually the benefit (to the programmer) of having a case-sensitive language?</strong></p> <p>The only things I can think of are: </p> <ul> <li>double the number of symbols</li> <li>visual feedback and easier reading for complex variables using techniques like CamelCase, e.g. <code>HopCount</code></li> </ul> <p>However, the first argument doesn't hold because of being a major source for bugs (bad practice to use hopcount and HopCount in one method). </p> <p>The second argument doesn't hold either, as a decent IDE can provide this also in an other way. A good example is the VBA IDE, which has a very good approach: the langauge is case-insensitive but as soon as you type a variable it will change it to the case used in its definition. For example, if you defined <code>Dim thisIsMyVariable as string</code>, it will change any occurrence of <code>thisismyvariable</code> into <code>thisIsMyVariable</code>). That provides the programmer with an immediate clue that the variable was actually typed-in correctly (because it changed appearance).</p> <p>Edit: added ... benefit <em>to the programmer</em> ...</p>
    singulars
    1. This table or related slice is empty.
    1. This table or related slice is empty.
    1. PTQuestion
    1. USCommunity
    1. USRabarberski
    plurals
    1. PL
      singulars
      1. LTLinked
    2. PL
      singulars
      1. LTLinked
    3. PL
      singulars
      1. LTLinked
    1. This table or related slice is empty.
    1. This table or related slice is empty.
    1. PO
      singulars
      1. PTAnswer
    2. PO
      singulars
      1. PTAnswer
    1. VO
      singulars
      1. POWhat's the benefit of case-sensitivity in a program language?
      1. This table or related slice is empty.
      1. VTUpMod
    2. VO
      singulars
      1. POWhat's the benefit of case-sensitivity in a program language?
      1. This table or related slice is empty.
      1. VTUpMod
    3. VO
      singulars
      1. POWhat's the benefit of case-sensitivity in a program language?
      1. This table or related slice is empty.
      1. VTUpMod
    1. COTechnically it's not double the number of symbols. Assuming a maximum symbol length of 32 characters, case-insensitive may be something like 38 characters (`a-z0-9_$`), having `38 ^ 32 = 3.57e+50` permutations. Adding another 26 characters when case-sensitive, we have `64 ^ 32 = 6.28e+57` permutations, which is about `1.76e+7` times more symbols, not just two times more symbols. Not that it's important.
      singulars
      1. POWhat's the benefit of case-sensitivity in a program language?
      1. USDelan Azabani
    2. COI think readability is the main one. Also makes the compiler do slightly less work. Consider `String string = new String();`
      singulars
      1. POWhat's the benefit of case-sensitivity in a program language?
      1. USMelv
    3. COYeah, for what it's worth, I **completely agree** about case sensitivity being there for the benefit of the computer, rather than the programmer. Unfortunately, this seems like a subjective/argumentative question, for which there is no clearly-defined answer. As such, I don't think it's a good fit on Stack Overflow. I don't really know what the policies are over at [programmers.stackexchange.com](http://programmers.stackexchange.com), but I think it'd be an interesting discussion to have there.
      singulars
      1. POWhat's the benefit of case-sensitivity in a program language?
      1. USCody Gray
 

Querying!

 
Guidance
A row detail

Detail views are divided into sections. All the information in the data section comes from columns in the selected row. The other sections display data from other, related rows.

Related data can be related in a to-one or a to-many fashion. Captions of data related in a to-many fashion link to a list view showing a filtered view of the table.

Try moving around until you find a non-empty to-many entry and click on the label to get to one. You can move back to the root by clicking on the database name in the header.

SQuiL has stopped working due to an internal error.

If you are curious you may find further information in the browser console, which is accessible through the devtools (F12).

Reload