Talk: CamelCase
From open-encyclopedia.com - the free encyclopedia.
| Contents |
Merged with Camel case, retitled
This page should be merged with Camel case. --Zundark 11:38 Nov 26, 2002 (UTC)
Will do. I'm deleting the destination & moving this, as it has the most history. -- Tarquin -- Done. -- Tarquin 13:11 Nov 26, 2002 (UTC)
The old joke is....why isn't the word for palindrome a palindrome? Somehow that relates to my qustion: why isn't Camel case written in a Camel case style? Should it be written as CamelCase in this article?Kingturtle 01:45 Apr 17, 2003 (UTC)
- Actually it IMHO very much should be written and titled "CamelCase", because that is also the common usage. Feel free to move/edit/fix redirects as appropriate. --Eloquence 04:27 May 5, 2003 (UTC)
- Done. Kingturtle 04:39 May 5, 2003 (UTC)
History of name
Also, what is the origin of the term Camel case? I am guessing that it is because the capital letters are like humps on a camel, but it should be stated in the article. Also, was there a particular programming language that named it that? Or did this word evolve from the street like spam? Kingturtle 01:49 Apr 17, 2003 (UTC)
- No idea who named it first, but yes, it's because of the capital letters resembling camel humps. Not sure if it even originated with programming, because the convention there is usually likeThis, i.e. lower case first. --Eloquence 04:49 May 5, 2003 (UTC)
I don't think McDonald's is a true exemplar of CamelCase, since this is a conventional form of capitalization for Scottish and Irish names. - Matt McLauchlin
- Well, IMHO "CamelCase" is only a generic name for the use of capitalization (rather than hyphens or spaces) to separate parts of a compound word. While the name is quite modern, the practice is much older and quite varied (cf. CinemaScope). So if the name "CamelCase" can be retoractively applied to those older uses, why not include the Scottish names as well? Jorge Stolfi 02:56, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Early Usenet Sightings
Here are the oldest Usenet postings of various terms, using Google Groups:
- BiCapitalized: alt.folklore.computers - 30 Jan 1991 by Eric S. Raymond: [1]
- BiCapitalization: alt.folklore.computers - 30 Jan 1991 by Eric S. Raymond: [2]
- BiCapitalisation: comp.sources.misc - 18 Mar 1992 by Alec David Muffett: [3]
- BiCapitalised: alt.folklore.computers - 12 Nov 1993 by pete: [4]
- BiCapitalize: rec.humor.oracle.d - 24 May 1995 by Karl A Krueger: [5]
- Camel Case: comp.os.linux.advocacy - 13 Sep 1995 by Newton Love: [6]
- camel-case: comp.lang.perl.misc - 23 Jan 1996 by Jeff Gruszynski: [7]
- CamelCase: comp.lang.pascal.delphi.misc - 18 Jun 1996 by Thomas Paul: [8]
- BiCapitalise: alt.usage.english - 9 Jan 1997 by Michael B. Quinion: [9]
- camel casing: netscape.public.mozilla.layout - 10 Nov 1998 by Angus Davis: [10]
- CamelCasing: alt.html - 5 May 1999 by Jay Rossiter / Signe: [11]
- camelcasing: comp.lang.javascript - 19 May 1999 by Jay Rossiter / Signe: [12]
- camelCased: microsoft.public.dotnet.framework.windowsforms - 17 Jan 2001 by Shawn Burke: [13]
- camel-cased: microsoft.public.dotnet.languages.csharp - 12 Mar 2001 by Dan Haygood: [14]
- bicapitalizing does not occur yet on Usenet but is on the WWW twice: [15] and [16]
— Hippietrail 14:37, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)
- Great! I have provisionally added some of this info to the article ("History of the name"). It would be nice to have the sources of those refs tracked down. Jorge Stolfi 02:56, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)
History of the style
It says that CamelCase originated as a C programming convention. Is this documented?
C traditionally used underscores to separate compound names. To my knowledge, while it may have been used earlier in localized contexts, CamelCase became a major epidemic only after 1979, mainly by influence of the Xerox PARC "Alto" (forerunner of the Macintosh) and its systems programming language, Mesa. The designers at PARC felt that a left-arrow key was essential, in order to avoid the =/== confusion bugs of C without the prolixity of Pascal's :=, and appropriated the underscore key for that purpose. Without an underscore key, Mesa programmers wre then forced to use CamelCase. This style spread to several universities which got Alto donations from PARC, and found its way into other PARC "products", such as the PostScript graphics language, and the short-lived Star commercial workstations [and possibly into Smalltalk - not sure]. Niklaus Wirth reportedly acquired a taste for the style during a visit to PARC, and adopted it -- perhaps for aesthetic(?) reasons only -- in the Lilith workstation project and the Modula and Oberon languages (his earlier language, Pascal, had used underscores). [I heard this story from John Wick and other PARC people in the 80's, when I was a summer intern there]. Many CamelCase-infected people from PARC later moved to other influential places such as Adobe and DEC SRC, which helped spread the virus further. The Alto inspired Vaugnh Pratt and others at Stanford to found the Sun corporation, and some CamelCasing in Sun products (such as OpenWindows) may perhaps be traced to that.
As for the name "CamelCase", the first time I saw it was week, here in Wikipedia.
Can anyone confirm this story, or provide earlier candidates? Jorge Stolfi
- The underscore wasn't "appropriated" by lovers of left arrows. For some reason or another, ASCII changed a few characters in (I think) the mid-70s. Left arrows on TTYs turned into underscores; up-arrows turned into carets. Just to add to the confusion.... jpgordon 04:35, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Alternate Origin - WordPerfect
I vaguely recall reading about how certain programs, like WordPerfect came to be without the space. Something about saving the extra character was cited... Krupo 06:58, Oct 28, 2004 (UTC)
CamelCase and Wiki
I did a major cleanup of this page. Following the "non-self-refrential" principle, I moved all the Wiki/Wikipedia material to separate pages (CamelCase and Wiki and Wikipedia:CamelCase and Wikipedia). Besides, I gather that the use of CamelCase in Wiki/Wikipedia was a very short-lived experiment which did not work well, so I wonder whether that material will be of much interest to readers, except to the persons involved).Jorge Stolfi 07:22, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Upper and lower CamelCase
camelCase -vs- Bicapitalization
Maybe this article is actually describing only Bicapitalization? See this website for a description of the difference with camelCase. http://www.faqs.org/docs/jargon/C/camelCase.html - Bevo 22:24, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)
- Well, the distinction is not so clear. When Xerox PARC started programming in underscore-free Mesa, they soon settled on a definite coding style that used both "dromedaryCase" and "CamelCase" - the former for variables and record fields, the latter for modules, types, and procedures. Jorge Stolfi 06:06, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Camel case -vs- mixed case
Wikipedia says mixed case is the same as camel case - is this really so? AFAIK this would be an example of mixed case: 'inputScreen();' while this would be camel case: 'InputScreen();'
A reference to this would be http://www.python.org/peps/pep-0008.html which says:
- CapitalizedWords (or CapWords, or CamelCase -- so named because
of the bumpy look of its letters[4]). This is also sometimes known as
StudlyCaps.
- mixedCase (differs from CapitalizedWords by initial lowercase
character!)
This is however in total contrast with ESR's Jargon Dictionary, which states that 'inputScreen();' is camel case, and 'InputScreen();' bicapitalization, like Jorge said.
Wikipedia contradicts both documents, so it really should be changed... but into what?
- Ludootje 16:08, 2 May 2004 (UTC)
Acronyms and CamelCase
I was wondering how all-capital-acronyms or words with funny capitalization (e.g. NASA, DoD, LoTR) are written in CamelCase. For instance, would you write MakeNasaInput or MakeNASAInput or MakeNASAinput? Would you say MakeLoTRImage, MakeLotrImage, or MakeLoTRimage?
Ordering of sections
Should't the section "CamelCase and coding standards" be placed after the "History" section? Now that CamelCase is a conspicuous item of mainstream culture, methinks that the article should be addressed primarily to the general reader, rather than to computer programmers... Jorge Stolfi 02:36, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Mobile phones?
The article claims "CamelCase has also become common among mobile phone users, thanks to the popularization of SMS (Short message service) in the late 1990s. With only 160 characters per one short text message, CamelCase makes it possible to optimize the message by excluding the spaces." Is this really true? I have never seen a text written in CamelCase. In fact, I rarely see texts using capitals at all, since they take longer to input on most phones. Everyone I know saves space by lvng vwls out, if they even bother to do that (since modern phones allow more than 160 chars, and predictive entry makes typing real words easier). But things might be different outside the UK...
- You are correct. It might be tried now and again, but it is not common. Spaces (and much more) are left out by using the uppper case only versions of phrases like LOL. I am going to remove that and see who edits it from there. - Bevo 15:34, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Justifying reversion of "Spread" section
I have reverted the following paragraphs to their former version, because they seemed inappropriate in several ways:
- Some of these examples (such as "wordperfect" and "quicktime") are perfectly good English words, CamelCased, rather than several words concatenated to each other, and as such do not necessarily demonstrate a computer-programming influence on popular culture. Other examples (such as "playstation") are similarly intended to resemble ordinary English words ("workstation").
Reasons: (1) I wonder whether un-hyphenated "wordperfect" and "quicktime" are really "perfectly good English words"; on the other hand, they certainly are "several words concatenated to each other"; (2) the issue of whether they are English words or not is irrelevant for the question of why they were CamelCased; (3) no one claimed that they were CamelCased by *direct* influence from computer programmers, but only that the style may have become fashionable for that reason; (4)those two examples are software products, so direct computer-programming influence is in fact quite likely.
- As as often the case with capitalization fads, it can be difficult for mere mortals to keep straight which brand names use CamelCase. The CamelCase fashion has become so pervasive that it is often incorrectly applied to names that do not use it officially, as in FireFox. The same is true of brand names, formerly CamelCased in its official form, such as MicroSoft, and those formerly all-capitalized, such as UseNet.
Reasons: (1) "mere mortals" is not "encyclopedic" style; (2) the original phrase "names that do not use [CamelCase] officially" already covers both all-caps and standard capitalization, so there is no need for a separate sentence; (3) The History section of the Microsoft article does not support the claim that the name was "formerly CamelCased in its official form" (it was hyphenated with lowercase "soft").
Jorge Stolfi 11:28, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)
