[asdf-devel] One failure on ASDF 3.1.0.70 on Allegro/Windows

[Faré]

On Tue, Feb 25, 2014 at 4:40 PM, Felix Lange <fjl at twurst.com> wrote:
> Sorry for hijacking this discussion.
>
No problem. There are no stupid questions (but see the famous
"cluelessness" demotivational poster).

> Why are system names case sensitive at all?
> Wouldn't it be more sane to just make them case-insensitive?
>
> It is more complicated to perform case-insensitive file search
> on a case-sensitive filesystem, of course.
>
Well, in practice, people either use symbols, that are downcased, or
strings, with a lowercase convention. Therefore, system names are case
sensitive, but there is a strong case-converting bias towards
lowercase. This both makes it hard to involuntarily stray from the
common practical case, yet possible to those who really care to.

Should non-lowercase strings be either forbidden or case-converted?
That's a backward incompatible change that would need to be tested
with cl-test-grid before it's committed — and even then might affect
unpublished or proprietary code by other users.

So far, this legacy system (inherited from Dan Barlow's ASDF) has
worked fine, and I don't see what is to be gained with this
incompatible change. I'm not the maintainer anymore, though, so it's
not my decision to make.

—♯ƒ • François-René ÐVB Rideau •Reflection&Cybernethics• http://fare.tunes.org
A student who changes the course of history is probably taking an exam.