[REBOL] Re: to-path newline problem?
From: brian:hawley at: 15-Aug-2001 11:19
Hi Joel,
Joel Neely wrote:
>I had hoped that the subsequent paragraph beginning with
>
> > Seriously, at least the case-ignorant behavior of string
> > equality testing is documented, and the use of ALIAS is...
>
>and the exaggerated quotation ("Shift key?...") would signal
>that I wasn't *totally* serious in my mild grumbling.
Sorry, I've been a little humor-impaired lately. Use smileys :)
>However...
>
>Brian Hawley wrote:
> >
> > It _is_ a feature. It is case-insensitive. The case-sensitive
> > function is strict-equal?, or == as an operator. Sometimes
> > you want a case-insensitive comparison.
> >
>
>Speaking for myself (who else! ;-) I *very rarely* want a
>case-ignorant comparison. And in those cases where I really
>do, I find the mental overhead of typing
>
> equal? lowercase somestring lowercase otherstring
>
>much lighter than the bewildering state of EQUAL? vs SAME? vs
>STRICT-EQUAL? vs NOT-EQUAL? vs STRICT-NOT-EQUAL? that has been
>at the root of so much discussion on this list. (OBTW, why
>isn't there a NOT-SAME? or its synonym DIFFERENT?)
>
>But, again, that's just speaking for myself. YMMV.
Alas, it does. I've been doing REBOL work primarily on Windows
and Mac machines, where one needs case-insensitive comparison
for operations on file names. And it's useful for parsing of
case-insensitive languages and such.
On the other hand, the multiplicity of functions in REBOL has
been just as tricky for me as it apparently has been for you.
I usually program with another copy of REBOL running for tests
and online help, and a browser up with the Dictionary. Not as
easy on Mac, though, because of the aforementioned troubles
with running multiple app instances. Or with WinCE, which has
similar troubles to the Mac for entirely different reasons. It
will be nice to get to work more on Linux...
I'd put in a vote for NOT-SAME? instead of DIFFERENT? because
of the DIFFERENCE native, and balance. I'm OK with writing
NOT SAME? until then, though :)
Brian Hawley
P.S. If you really want a confusing language, try Icon (one of
my favorites). If I remember correctly, it has 4 operators for
different kinds of equality, with another 4 for corresponding
inequalities. And no written-out equivalents. Add to that some
strange control-flow gotchas and you sometimes get a debug-only
language. Powerful, though - its backtracking prepared me to
understand the more interesting aspects of the parse dialect.
