Proposed Enhancement to select/case (yes, I know...)

[Henry Spencer]

In article <1990Aug31.134248 at ee.ubc.ca> mikeb at salmon.ee.ubc.ca writes:
>         case 'A'..'Z': printf ("upper case\n"); break;

Heh heh.  What does this do on an EBCDIC machine?  Not what you think!
POSIX 1003.2, which unlike the GNoids has seriously *thought* about the
problem, eventually decided that use of such ranges was inherently
unportable.  It also has a problem in that it is Anglocentric:  the
intent is presumably to pick up all uppercase alphabetics, but that
is *not* necessarily A through Z.  1003.2 has made some minor extensions
to regular-expression syntax, for example, so you can really say "match
any uppercase alphabetic", rather than saying "match A through Z" and
hoping that's right.
-- 
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