!standard 03.05 (43) 99-07-08 AI95-00053/03 !class confirmation 95-06-25 !status WG9 approved 95-06-14 !status ARG approved (subject to editorial review) 7-0-2 95-11-01 !status received 95-06-25 !subject Case sensitivity of Wide_Value and Value attributes !summary S'Wide_Value and S'Value are not case sensitive for nongraphic characters. !question For S'Wide_Value in the case of a nongraphic character, 3.5(43) gives the following condition under which the normal result is returned; otherwise, Constraint_Error is raised: "...if the sequence of characters of the parameter (ignoring leading and trailing spaces) has the syntax of an enumeration literal and if it ... corresponds to the result of S'Wide_Image for a nongraphic character of the type..." Does the use of the term "corresponds" intended to imply case sensitivity? (No.) !response A sequence of characters corresponds to the result of S'Wide_Image if it is the same ignoring case. Thus, S'Wide_Value is not case sensitive in the case of a nongraphic character. The same applies to S'Value. It is clearly the intent that the "correspondence" mentioned above be case insensitive. Thus, Character'Wide_Value("nul") does not raise Constraint_Error, even though Character'Wide_Value returns "NUL" for the nul character. !ACATS test ACATS test C352001 checks that the character names can be given in lower case. !appendix !section 03.05(43) !subject: Unspecified case sensitivity for non-graphic images !reference as: 95-5150.a Michael Hirasuna 95-6-4>> !reference RM95-03.05(43) !from: Michael Hirasuna 95-06-04 !keywords: case sensitivity, non-graphic characters, wide_value attribute !discussion: It is not specified if the text image of a non-graphic character, when passed as an argument to S'Wide_Value, is case sensitive. The paragraph states that the image should correspond to the result of S'Wide_Image for that non-graphic character, which would imply that the image had to be in upper case. This would be inconsistent with other language constructs. Because the image of a non-graphic character is not part of the language syntax, the rule for case independent identifiers (2.3(5)) does not apply. In other areas involving letters, the reference manual explicitly states case independence, i.e. for based literals (2.4.2(8)) and for the 'E' exponent notation (2.4.1(6)). Since there is no global to rule to cover it, the case sensitivity for non-graphic images should be clearly defined, or defined as being implementation dependent. Mike (hirasuna@acm.org) ****************************************************************