Speaking Python

[Yvonne Thomson]

At Tue, 14 Oct 2003 12:22:41 GMT,
Alex Martelli wrote:
> 
> Yvonne Thomson wrote:
>    ...
> > you'll have to ask specific questions for me to actually know what else
> > to tell you, but I figured I might as well chime in on this.
> 
> It seems all the languages you've used are case-sensitive, so maybe
> you don't have relevant experience with the following issue, but I just
> thought I'd ask -- isn't case-sensitivity a problem?  How does your
> setup pronounce things, in order to distinguish, say:
>     muscat = 23
> (assigning 23 to the all-lower-case name muscat) from
>     musCat = 23
> (same but with the name being assigned to having an uppercase instead
> of lowercase C in the middle)?
> 
There are actually a couple of answers to that one. Firstly, if it's my
own code, I've usually got a system for that kind of thing. E.g. I
either use capitials for variables, or I use underscores or dashes, but
I usually have a system. I either capitalise functions, or I don't, and
so on.

If it's someone elses code, they usually also have a system, so you
often don't actually *have* to always look at that kind of thing. If you
*do* need to know, it actually depends on the screen reader you're
using, and the hardware you're using. In my case, muscat is spoken as
one word, whereas, to me, musCat sounds like two words. It's called
split caps in emacspeak, and it means that the system tries to break the
words up so they're separate. Sometimes I have to look, character by
character, to check what's going on, but not as often as you'd think.

You could also set it up so that whenever there's a capital, it beeps to
indicate that, or says cap. E.g. mus-cap-cat. It mostly depends on the
situation, and what you're used to.

Wow, what a longwinded message to explain something farely basic. sorry
about that, <grin>.