Really? Just aesthetics? :-o I supposed it had some practical goal I was missing, since for example the original Rc paper still referred to $IFS.
This would flips the question a bit: I wonder why the same designers chose uppercase variable names while designing Unix... :-) Giacomo 2017-10-17 16:39 GMT+02:00 Dan Cross <cro...@gmail.com>: > On Tue, Oct 17, 2017 at 10:38 AM, Giacomo Tesio <giac...@tesio.it> wrote: > > Out of curiosity, do anybody know why Plan9 designers chose lowercase > > variables over uppercase ones? > > > > At first, given the different conventions between rc and sh (eg $path is > an > > array, while $PATH is a string), I supposed Plan 9 designers wanted to > > prevent conflict with unix tools relying to the older conventions. > > > > However, I'm not sure this was the main reason, as this also open to > subtle > > issues: if a unix shell modifies $IFS and then invoke an rc script, such > > script will ignore the change and keep using the previous $ifs. > > > > > > As far as I can see, APE does not attempt any translation between the two > > conventions, so maybe I'm just missing something obvious... > > > > > > Do anyone know what considerations led to such design decision? > > Aesthetics. > >
