4 ms·
Why every file name is uppercase? Is there any reason for that convention, perhaps better readability on low res display?
by ivanjermakov 3y ago
Why every file name is uppercase? Is there any reason for that convention, perhaps better readability on low res display?
- j16sdiz 3y agoDOS filenames are uppercase. That came from CP/M. In early days, computers just don't do lowercase. When you do case-insensitivty, storing names in uppercase make sense if all older filesystem are uppercase only
- cbsmith 3y agoInterestingly, CP/M's filesystem would actually do lowercase. It's just CPP would uppercase every command entered at the command line before executing it. Not surprisingly, people tended to use uppercase with CP/M.
- cbsmith 3y agoIt's inherited from CP/M. That's also where the 8.3 character limits came from. Interestingly, CP/M's filesystem did support lower case characters, but CP/M's CPP would convert whatever commands you gave it to the upper case before they are executed. DOS's filesystem was case insensitive, but they otherwise followed CP/M's conventions.
- fsckboy 3y agoCP/M copied DEC's operating systems, like RSX-11. They inherited the uppercase from the time when memory was expensive and 6bit ascii would fit more characters into a 36 bit word.
- whartung 3y agoWith MS-BASIC on CP/M, if you saved the file using lowercase, BASIC would not upshift it, and the CPP commands could not act of the resulting files. You’d have to fix it by removing the file within BASIC using the built in command (KILL I think) then saving it in uppercase. Can’t say MS considered it a bug or simply chose to not fix it for backward compatibility. It existed in quite late versions.
- wvenable 3y agoUgh I feel old.
- cbsmith 3y agoI feel your pain.
- kqr 3y agoI don't get it. Even if filenames were displayed in uppercase back then, there's no reason to do so now. It's like how people write SQL with uppercase keywords, but not any other language. I suppose it's learning by emulation and then old habits die hard.
- Dalewyn 3y agoReadability. Pardon the breach of rules for a moment: IT'S EASIER TO READ THIS THAN it's easier to read this.
- kqr 3y agoExcept it's not! If it is, you need to make text much bigger. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2016788/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2016788/ If readability of lower-case was the issue we would write all variable and function names in upper case, even in languages that have lower-case keywords.
- skipkey 3y agoThe important thing is, the style needs to be consistent over the whole codebase. If most of the SQL has uppercase keywords, a small portion that does not will be harder to read. I dislike the PEP8 style for python, but I use it anyways, mostly.
- lproven 3y agoRemember that this stuff was designed in the era when dumb terminals and early PCs had text-only displays which were incapable of showing more than one character size or one colour. Secondly, upper-casing some parts is not about global readability; it's about contrasting code on monochrome displays. The PARTS IN CAPITALS are the parts the language (compiler or whatever) defines and must have spelled exactly that way. The parts in lowercase are the names, symbols etc. that the programmer defines rather than the compiler or OS. Personally that is how I learned and even now, some 40 years later, I find that C-style everything in lower case is MUCH less readable for me than mixed CAPS and minuscule.