Subject: Re: reading symbols preserving case
From: rpw3@rpw3.org (Rob Warnock)
Date: Fri, 03 Apr 2009 21:39:33 -0500
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Message-ID: <KqSdnaQtw_L4VUvUnZ2dnUVZ_oTinZ2d@speakeasy.net>
Raffael Cavallaro  <raffaelcavallaro@gmail.com> wrote:
+---------------
| t...@sevak.isi.edu (Thomas A. Russ) wrote:
| > It really doesn't make a lot of sense to support foo-bar Foo-Bar and
| > Foo-bar as three different symbols. �Most non-programmers don't really
| > consider them different.
| >
| > So the symbol behavior should be case-preserving AND case-insensitive.
| 
| I agree, but you'd be surprised how many programmers *want* case
| sensitive symbol comparison. Qi has case sensitive symbol comparison
| for example. Go figure.
+---------------

For me, case-sensitive symbol comparison mainly arises when
reading/writing data formats originating outside the Common Lisp
context that are themselves case-sensitive, e.g., EDIF design
files (such as produced by the OrCAD schematic capture program),
which are basically just case-sensitive s-exprs that use CamelCase
symbols [*megabytes* of them!!]. For this application, READTABLE-CASE
:INVERT works very well, since mainly you just need read/write invariance.


-Rob

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