I am wondering about the history of lower case letters[John:]
in programming languages, [...].
The first I know about is C. Ones I knew before then
didn't allow then at all, though it might be that some DEC
compilers would ignore case.
[(...) Algol60 was specified in lower case
but most implementations were upper case only.
I can't think
of a language before C that was actually implemented in lower
case but I wouldn't count on it being the first. -John]
Eg, those of us who had Flexowriters [essentially electric typewriters
with paper tape facilities] expected to write programs in the same way
that we typed letters. Not just the programs, we were also early into
"word processing", and I remember the pleasure we got when someone
found out how to make the Flexowriter half space, so that it became
possible to "justify" lines without the jarring switch from single to
double spacing towards the end of most lines, but could instead go to one-and-a-half spacing.
The 2741 uses the IBM Selectric typewriter as its print mechanism, so
is naturally lower case. Wylbur has a mode where all input data is converted to upper case (for programs), and a mode when it isn't (for letter writing).
[We used 2741 terminals with TSS/360 also. I think it did something
similar, normally mapping lower to upper case. -John]
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