- Uppercase Keywords (was BB: The future: Is there one?)

From: CFB Software <"CFB>
Date: Sun, 21 May 2006 23:39:33 +0930

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> -----Original Message-----
> From: blackbox{([at]})nowhere.xy
> Behalf Of CFB Software
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: blackbox{([at]})nowhere.xy
> > Behalf Of Les May
> >
> > The case sensitivity and the
> > use of upper
> > case for keywords is a nuisance. How nice it would be to have
> > an editor
> > which accepts any case and changes it to upper case automatically.
> > Perhaps BB has one already and I just have not found it.
> >
>
> I wrote a keyword convertor that takes an existing text and
> converts all
> of the lowercase Component Pascal keywords and reserved words to
> uppercase. If you cannot find anything else and are interested I can
> make it available.
>

Since my earlier reply I've carried out a few tests and decided that a
non-discriminating keyword convertor is not such a good idea after all.
I used it on a random sample of half-a-dozen Component Pascal source
code examples written by different authors and compared the conversion
with the original. They should have been identical. However, that was
not the case as they all happen to make use of lower-case equivalents of
keywords as valid identifiers, e.g. 'type', 'mod', 'size' and 'of'. Time
taken fixing up the mistakenly converted identifiers negates any
advantage of the tool.

A simpler less-automatic solution is a case-conversion 'hotkey' which
just converts the current selected word. I think you'll find such a
function in Fyodor Tkachov's Epse21 project in Helmut Zinn's Component
Pascal Collection:

http://www.zinnamturm.de/
 
Personally, I find it easier to accept a particular situation if I feel
that there was some careful reasoning behind the design rather than it
being the result of an arbitrary decision or whim. In the case of
anything designed by Wirth this can usually be safely assumed.

My experience with the convertor highlights one of the advantages of
Component Pascal - as long as you avoid using all uppercase when naming
identifiers you will never clash with a reserved word, either now or in
the future - even if the language is extended in an unforeseen way.

Other advantages associated with the use of case-sensitivity and
uppercase keywords include readability, faster searches, fewer false
search results and quicker compilation times. These are likely to have
been the main design considerations when Oberon was initially designed.

Admittedly, however, these issues are no longer quite as significant as
they were then - about twenty years ago. Colour, instead of monochrome
screens are now the norm, so colour has taken the place of uppercase for
highlighting keywords. Also, it is now much easier to get away with
processing inefficiencies because of the exorbitant amount of computing
power we have at our fingertips.

--
Chris Burrows
CFB Software
http://www.cfbsoftware.com/gpcp
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Received on Sun May 21 2006 - 16:09:33 UTC