[PATCH] A compromise on case - another suggestion

[Simon Brunning]

Nick Mathewson wrote in message ...
>"Everybody's always talking about the weather, but nobody seems to
do
> anything about it."

Speaking as a newcomer to Python myself, case sensitivity *is*
causing me a few problems - I'm from a case insensitive language
background, and 'node' looks just like 'Node' to me unless I'm
*really* concentrating. If I use both in a module (and I have!),
then it's because I've fouled up.

Having said that, I can appreciate that there are reasons why the
language *should* remain case sensitive. Putting the first character
in upper case for classes and lower for everything else makes sense.
Someone posted saying that mathematicians find case sensitivity
*very* intuitive. But by far the most compelling argument as far as
I'm concerned is that we shouldn't break existing code.

What would sort out this problem for me would be if I were *warned*
about case-clash. What I need is some kind of plug in for IDLE,
which checks for identifiers differing only by case when I save, and
warns me if any are found, (giving a list of offenders, of course.)

I envision this being enabled by default, to help newbies like
myself. Expert users should be able to disable the check via a
command line option if they wish.

I have had a look into the extend stuff, but I'm not sure how to do
this. (As I said, I'm a newbie.) Any hints?

BTW, a case check would seem to complement Nick's suggestion, rather
than replace it.

Cheers,
Simon Brunning
TriSystems Ltd.
sbrunning at trisystems.co.uk
The opinions expressed are mine, and are not necessarily those of my
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