[plt-scheme] case-sensitive reader by default

PLTers-

I already voted "Please not" in a private email to Matthew, but I'm 
happy to give my reasons for Eli's sake.

(And perhaps someone will discover, via the reasons, that I have 
misinterpreted of the proposal)

I often write code using capital forms to refer to keywords like LET 
and LAMBDA.

Specifically, I use capital letters when I'm writing syntax objects 
(mostly in the form of syntax-rules macros).  I also use capital 
letters when I write expressions inlined with english text, so that I 
could hypothetically answer John Milliway's recent question with the 
puzzle:
(COMPOSE EVAL READ)

A case sensitive reader would distinguish the symbol 'let from the 
symbol 'LET, and so I'd need to hack around that in any source-code 
analysis systems I (or someone else) may develop (or have developed), 
or change my code to not use the capitalized forms.

I don't understand what the big deal is.  There's already the 
command-line options, and #cs as well.  Write a wrapper script people!

Obviously, if the Yay's end up having this vote, then I'll be happy to 
just live with some sort of analogous ways to revert to 
case-insensitivity for my own code (I'd prefer to have both {#cis and 
-G / --case-insens) available, so that I can revert my local mzscheme 
init script to pass the appropriate option, and at the same time write 
modules that I can distribute without fear of the case-sensitivity 
flummoxing things up).

-Felix

On Apr 27, 2004, at 5:51 PM, Eli Barzilay wrote:

>   For list-related administrative tasks:
>   http://list.cs.brown.edu/mailman/listinfo/plt-scheme
>
> On Apr 27, Matthew Flatt wrote:
>>
>> At Tue, 27 Apr 2004 22:17:27 +0200, Michael Sperber wrote:
>>>
>>>>>>>> "Neil" == Neil W Van Dyke <neil at neilvandyke.org> writes:
>>>
>>> Neil> Any chance the MzScheme reader could be changed to be 
>>> case-sensitive by
>>> Neil> default?
>>>
>>> Please not.
>>
>> Other votes?
>>
>> The polls close Friday, April 30, 2004 at 8:00 AM MDT...
>
> Please do.
>
> (I'm almost afraid to ask mike for his reasons, given the infinite
> thread in this neighborhood.)
>
> -- 
>           ((lambda (x) (x x)) (lambda (x) (x x)))          Eli 
> Barzilay:
>                   http://www.barzilay.org/                 Maze is 
> Life!
>

----
"Generations of frosh would hail you as
  the most venerable elder of course 6"  -asok