Who Needs Case-Sensitivity in Java?

David Barber asks: "I've just started learning Java, and to my exceptional disappointment it is as case-sensitive as C. I'd like to ask Slashdot readers to make the case for case-sensitivity in a programming language, because I can't see it. Although I've used C on and off since 1976, I also have a history of Fortran, COBOL, PL/I, assembler, and other legacy languages that were never case sensitive (perhaps due to the single case nature of card punches). Today I use modern languages including Visual Basic which preserves case for pleasing appearance, but is not case-sensitive itself (it will correct the case for you in the IDE, which is quite nice). In all my years of programming I have never seen the rationale for making a programming language case sensitive. It simply makes typing it in harder, and mistakes easier, yet we persevere with maintaining it in modern languages like Java. Without making this into a religious war, can someone make the argument of why case-sensitivity in a language is 'a good thing'? And don't confuse this with handling case-sensitive data, which is fine."

Comments

Java

[GuyWithLag]

Take a look at eclipse. Not only is it a subperb IDE that you can pick up within the hour, it has the correct-my-case-for-me feature you asked for.

Note that in Java case has by convention semantic significance, so that you can discern org.foo.Bar.bleh from org.foo.bar.Bleh.

Re:An argument for case-sensitivity

[Bluetrust25]

There was a great post on this subject on comp.lang.c back in 1989 by an academic named Rahul Dhesi:

Why languages should be case-sensitive:

People may use |COUNT| and |count| to mean the same thing, but mathematicians don't. In mathematical expressions it's very useful to use case distinctions for related entities. For example,

Consider a graph G(V,E)

for each vertex v in V do
find an edge e in E such that e is incident on v ...

Since programming languages are meant for use by technical people, and since computer programming and mathematics are so intimately related, it pays to let computer programmers use the same tools that mathematicians do. Not only should programming languages be case-sensitive, but they should allow the use of subscripts, superscripts, and Greek letters too, to make the notation more powerful and more intuitive. Right now we have to go through some trouble to compact mathematical notation to a verbose format just because the computer's character set is so inadequate.

Link to the original post

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Mistakes easier?

[profet]

It simply makes typing it in harder, and mistakes easier

easier??? If anything it makes mistakes harder. Java is a very strict language syntax wise and will probably error out on compile if you have a syntax error.

Now lets think...what would happen if it didn't error out because of case sensitive erors? Wouldn't that make it "easier" to make mistakes?

Re:History

[Mr. Slippery]

You can still capitalize your static variables if you like...If you spell a variable "thisIsImportant" in hundreds of places throughout your source code, but in one place spell it "ThisIsImportant" a case sensitive language like Java will consider those two DIFFERENT variables.

It won't be considered a different variable, it will be considered an undeclared variable. The compliler will choke on it.

As it should. If people use case convertions to convey information - static variables are capitalized - then the compiler enforcing consistent casing is good. Else in file1.c it's "ThisIsStatic", in file2.c it's "thisisstatic"; Alice, looking a file1.c, knows it's static, while Bob, looking at file2.c, doesn't get that same information. The compiler is merely making you pick a way and stick to it, for the benefit of your fellow humans.

Should the compilier also ignore misspellings? If "Variable1" appears all over the place and in one place "Variabl1" appears, should the complier auto-correct it to "Variable1"?