Re: Issue: PATHNAME-COMPONENT-CASE (Version 1)

[Scott.Fahlman@B.GP.CS.CMU.EDU]

Let me see if I understand the philosophy underlying your argument.  It
seems to go as follows:

1. There are certain complex and difficult things that a Common Lisp
programmer must do in order to be sure that his code will be absolutely
portable across all known file systems, living and dead.

2. Some people believe that they don't care about that kind of portability.
If given a choice they will not worry about these painful and complex
things.

3. *WE* know that this attitude is short-sighted, so we should try to
remove the temptation to cut corners.  In this case, the best way to do
that is to make sure EVERYONE has to deal with these portability issues all
the time, whether they want to or not.

4.  In the end, they'll thank us for saving them from their baser
instincts.

-- or, more briefly --

Nobody ever expects the Spanish Inquisition!!!

Well, I've said my piece, and will abide by the decision of the committee.
If you and Moon can persuade some of the non-Symbolics people on the
committee that the good names should go to the portable case-bashing
versions, I'll disagree, but I can live with it.

-- Scott

P. S.  I don't agree with your "really compelling argument" about natural
language.  I don't think that an all-upcase sentence is any more
syntactically correct than an all-lower-case one.  But that's not
important, since your arguments about upper-case being the default
elsehwere in the language is a pretty good one.