On Tue, Oct 17, 2017, 8:05 AM Giacomo Tesio <giacomo@tesio.it> wrote:

> Really? Just aesthetics? :-o
>


> This would flips the question a bit: I wonder why the same designers chose
> uppercase variable names while designing Unix... :-)
>

Programs can evolve, why not names? There was no expectation that sh
scripts would work in rc.


>
> Giacomo
>
> 2017-10-17 16:39 GMT+02:00 Dan Cross <crossd@gmail.com>:
>
>> On Tue, Oct 17, 2017 at 10:38 AM, Giacomo Tesio <giacomo@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.
>>
>>
>