Re: Issue: READ-CASE-SENSITIVITY (Version 1)

[Kent M Pitman <KMP@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>]

    Date: 14 Mar 89 14:17 PST
    From: masinter.pa@Xerox.COM

    Why not just (READTABLE-CASE <readtable>) that accepts/returns :UPCASE (the
    default) or :DOWNCASE.

This would be fine, but I would prefer :PRESERVE rather than :DOWNCASE for the
alternate value. One might legitimately want :DOWNCASE as well (although it
would be near useless for CL, it might be useful for other things) so I wouldn't
want to lock down that name.

All in all, though, I like somebody's (Gray's?) suggestion of a function rather
than a table. The default being #'CHAR-UPCASE, and #'IDENTITY being another
obvious choice.

The reason I like the function rather than the keyword is that you don't have
to initially provide the alternate functionality -- user's can add it. In the
case of the keyword, it has to be given by the system so you're at the mercy
of the implementors as to which options you get. I think this feature is worth
the added complexity.