[pacman-dev] Rationale for the patch for case insensitive configuration values

[Dan McGee]

On Mon, Jan 16, 2012 at 11:40 PM, lolilolicon <lolilolicon at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 17, 2012 at 8:24 AM, Alexander Rødseth <rodseth at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> I understand that case sensitivity can, perhaps, bring clarity for
>> configuration values like ILoveCandy, but IMO, both "Never" and
>> "never" should be allowed, as the uppercase letters bring no more
>> clarity, but add an additional requirement for the users to conform
>> to. That is the reason for the patch. Also, in the name of
>> consistency, I changed all the checks in conf.c, not just the check
>> for the word "Never".
>>
>> This is about simplicity and removing a constraint that users
>> shouldn't have to relate to when editing pacman.conf.
>
> This is not about simplicity, but "user-friendliness" or ease.
>
> Look at pacman.conf, every directive or option is in CamelCase, and the
> only things that are (likely) in lowercase are package and repo names and
> file paths.
>
> This distinction is good and increases clarity.  By being case
> insensitive, you introduce complexity, allow this consistency to be
> broken and potentially reduce clarity.

The below commit should speak for itself, we are never ever going back
to case-insensitive comparison. ILoveCandy is a perfect example of the
below i vs. I vs. ı vs. İ case.

commit b3e6cf652c9e989badaf5499abb1d64c1a110927
Author: Chantry Xavier <shiningxc at gmail.com>
Date:   Thu Mar 13 16:36:44 2008 +0100

    Drop case insensitive comparisons in the config parsing.