Re: RFC 143 (v1) Case ignoring eq and cmp operators

[Dan Sugalski]

At 11:33 AM 8/24/00 -0600, Tom Christiansen wrote:
> >While I don't know that I'd argue in favor of this feature request, your
> >argument against misses the mark here. It's saying, essentially, that the
> >difference between "P" and "p" is the same as the difference between -1 and
> >1. That, as they say, turns out not to be the case.
>
> >The upper and lower-case versions of letters in many languages are
> >essentially equivalent and it's reasonable to want them to be treated the
> >same way when that's appropriate.
>
>If you want to treat 1 and -1 as the same, you filter through abs().
>If you want to treat a and A as the same, you filter through lc().

As I said, I wasn't arguing for or against the feature, merely pointing out 
that your argument against wasn't quite on-target. In most human languages, 
"Please" and "please" are the same word, though that's not the case with 
computer languages. The numbers 1 and -1 aren't the same, though.

Personally I think I'm in favor of Nat's suggestion of allowing the 
definition of new infix operators and let this be taken care of in a 
module, but that's just passing the buck. (Not that it's a bad strategy, 
mind... :)

                                        Dan

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