Talk:CamelCase

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[edit] CinemaScope is not CamelCase

As seen at [1], the CinemaScope mark consists entirely of uppercase letters (look at the 'A'), with the 'C' and 'S' simply larger than the other (capital) letters. IMO all citations of CinemaScope should be removed from this page, except possibly to an image of the mark and an explanation of why it is not an example of CamelCase. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jlf2 (talk • contribs) 23:14, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

The text on that page spells the name as "CinemaScope" over and over. That's not quite proof, but, before deleting CinemaScope from the article, you should check how the company spelled its product's name in printed text. Methinks it was indeed 'CinemaScope'...
Moreover, I would say that the poster is in CamelCase, but using a so-called 'caps and small caps font', where lowercase letters are just smaller copies of the uppercase ones. Jorge Stolfi 03:01, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
Hi Jorge, I agree that CamelCase is often a necessary approximation to the actual caps+small caps combination, but it seems questionable to hold up such an approximation as an example of CamelCase. Maybe I'm splitting hairs, but if the references to CinemaScope remain I think it's worthwhile to draw a distinction between the actual mark, which is not CamelCase, and the typical ASCII representation of the mark, which is. Regards, —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jlf2 (talk • contribs) 02:18, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Stupid synonyms.

"DrinkingCamel", "WalkingCamel"? Some of these are blatantly made up and used by nobody, e.g. "ProudCamel" only turns up this article on Google (and Google is relevant here because quirky programmer names for things are found more on the Web than in print). I think people are either trusting the "Jargon File" too much or trying to introduce their own original terms into common usage; neither is a good thing in an encyclopaedia. I was going to trim the list of synonyms to just a few reasonable, common ones but it's so long I can't even face it. 86.131.94.108 03:38, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] This isn't camelcase.

Camelcase is NOT as defined on the page. Camelcase is where you capitalize each consonant but not the vowels.... LiKe THiS, oK?

Umm, I think you're thinking of Studly capitalization. Noel (talk) 01:49, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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've heard that it comes from the Perl programming language. It's main reference manual uses this format for naming functions, and renders a camel in its cover (Perl's symbol is a camel, and the book itself is known as "The Camel Book" in the perl community). Setsuden 05:46, 5 April 2006 (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)

[edit] 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: [2]
  • BiCapitalization: alt.folklore.computers - 30 Jan 1991 by Eric S. Raymond: [3]
  • BiCapitalisation: comp.sources.misc - 18 Mar 1992 by Alec David Muffett: [4]
  • BiCapitalised: alt.folklore.computers - 12 Nov 1993 by pete: [5]
  • BiCapitalize: rec.humor.oracle.d - 24 May 1995 by Karl A Krueger: [6]
  • Camel Case: comp.os.linux.advocacy - 13 Sep 1995 by Newton Love: [7]
  • camel-case: comp.lang.perl.misc - 23 Jan 1996 by Jeff Gruszynski: [8]
  • CamelCase: comp.lang.pascal.delphi.misc - 18 Jun 1996 by Thomas Paul: [9]
  • BiCapitalise: alt.usage.english - 9 Jan 1997 by Michael B. Quinion: [10]
  • camel casing: netscape.public.mozilla.layout - 10 Nov 1998 by Angus Davis: [11]
  • CamelCasing: alt.html - 5 May 1999 by Jay Rossiter / Signe: [12]
  • camelcasing: comp.lang.javascript - 19 May 1999 by Jay Rossiter / Signe: [13]
  • camelCased: microsoft.public.dotnet.framework.windowsforms - 17 Jan 2001 by Shawn Burke: [14]
  • camel-cased: microsoft.public.dotnet.languages.csharp - 12 Mar 2001 by Dan Haygood: [15]
  • bicapitalizing does not occur yet on Usenet but is on the WWW twice: [16] and [17]

— 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)

[edit] 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)
I can attest personally that the Alto had a left arrow key and lacked the undesrcore key; so that part of the story is true. The question is whether that was the start of CamelCase, or whether the style started elsewhere. Perhaps the keybaord was changed to suit the language, rather than the other way around? Jorge Stolfi 02:15, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
My guess as to why C used underscores is that Thompson and Richie picked it up from their time working on Multics (which was before they did C and Unix); Multics used _ very extensively to separate multi-word variable/routine names.
Actually, I'm kind of surprised that, on the PDP-11 at least, CamelCase wasn't more popular in Unix, because external names (both data and procedure) were limited to 7 characters in C (8, actually, but C always added a hidden leading _ to prevent collisions with assembler externals), so you didn't have a lot of characters to waste!
One also needs to remember that before Multics (and the more advanced computers of the next generation like Unix), most computers didn't support lower case, so mixed-case wasn't an option anyway. Noel (talk) 03:58, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] Upper and lower CamelCase

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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?

Yes. Yes you would. — mendel ☎ 14:15, August 25, 2005 (UTC)
So, there’s no standard for acronyms in CamelCase? —Frungi 04:37, 10 October 2005 (UTC)
There's really no standard, period Consider it descriptive rather than prescriptive (although a particular shop might insist on it, and might also insist on a particular way of handling acronyms). Of those examples I suspect the ones which begin their final word with a lowercase letter would be the least common, and the ones that don't affect the capitalization of their acronyms would be most common. — mendel ☎ 15:44, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] 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)

Someone had moved the 'current computing usage' section (relabeled 'Software Engineering') into the middle of the history section, breaking its flow. I restored the order as above ('History' first, 'Current usage' later). Jorge Stolfi 02:19, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] 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. - [[User:Bevo|Bevo]] 15:34, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I disagree. It's still used heavily - at least here in Belgium. So I think removing this is not the right way to go, maybe mentioning that it's more common in some countries than others, but removing information is IMHO not the best choice...
Ludootje 13:49, Jun 10, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] 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)

[edit] Camel or Pascal?

Microsoft (and many other internet sources, easy to google) considers casing being presented here PascalCase and camelCase being another one. Who's mistake is this? http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/cpgenref/html/cpconcapitalizationstyles.asp Marek 84.47.61.214 00:01, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

See CamelCase#Variations and synonyms; the names UpperCamelCase and lowerCamelCase are used there, and mention of PascalCase is given too. Noel (talk) 02:06, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] In-word capitals in other languages - is this CamelCase?

In German, there is a common (though not standard) usage of capital "I"s inside nouns to make them gender-neutral: Binnen-I (German wikipedia article) Example: "BürgerInnen", short for "Bürgerinnen und Bürger", meaning "[male as well as female] citizens". It looks like CamelCase but I'm not sure if this phenomenon should be discussed under "CamelCase" at all. Here, the second part of the word is not a noun but the female suffix "-in" (singular) or "-innen" (plural), and the capitalizing of the i says "this part is optional". It's similar to gender-neutralizing wildcards used in other languages, like Spanish "-@s" or "-*s" (meaning "-os/-as"), or Dutch "-*s" (meaning "-ers/-sters").--84.188.132.207 16:14, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)


I wasn't sure if this was the right spot to add this note, but the examples cited for Irish and Scots Gaelic are only CamelCase because the word to which the prefix was added was already capitalized (Albanach, Éire, etc.). Words which aren't capitalized before prefixing don't become CamelCased. (Cf. the proverb "Go néirí an tá leat," in which the 'n' is prefixed.) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.201.66.254 (talk) 05:15, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Neutral name

The page currently gives the misleading impression that CamelCase is some kind of official name for this phenomenon, which I don't think is true. I think the page should have a neutral name like "Internal capitalization" and list CamelCase as one common name. Would anyone object if I did this? --Dtcdthingy 10:31, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

I did a web search, and discovered that "CamelCase" is the preferred term:
  • 23,400 for "Camel Case"
  • 42,900 for "CamelCase"
  • 841 for "Internal capitalization"
so almost anything would be preferable to "Internal Capitalization", which is a term nobody seems to use (or know). Noel (talk) 01:46, 20 July 2005 (UTC)
PS: When you did the move, you didn't fix all the many redirects which pointed to it, resulting in a lot of broken Wikipedia:Double redirects. (Actually, I guess that was a feature, not a bug - when I moved it back, I didn't have to fix them all again.) Noel (talk) 01:52, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

In line with the policy that the term used in a redirect should be visible at the top of the article, I did a modest number of searches to see which of the many redirects to this page should be included as explicit terms in the article text. Here's what I got:

  • 1,420 for "Bicapitalization"
  • 263 for "BumpyCase"
  • 2,260 for "InterCaps"
  • 49 for "Intercapitalization"
  • 72 for "Mixed-case identifier"
  • 18,200 for "MixedCase"
  • 635 for "PascalCase"

Note that this isn't all of the redirects - I didn't have the energy to try them all! Anyway, I set an arbitrary boundary of 1,000, and made mention of all that had more than that many web hits. Noel (talk) 02:25, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

I think you miss understand my point about having a neutral name. While in some limited contexts it is known as CamelCase, it is not the common name in other contexts. When people do a search on wikipedia and discover the page is called CamelCase, they'll assume that's what it's correctly called in all contexts, which is completely not true. I was not proposing that Internal Capitalization is the correct name, just that it is neutral. (PS sign off with your actual username) --Dtcdthingy 09:20, 20 July 2005 (UTC)
in some limited contexts it is known as CamelCase??? Over 75,000 hits for "Camel Case" and "CamelCase" together? Some "limited contexts". Noel (talk) 15:31, 25 July 2005 (UTC)
I mean that it's known by other names in other contexts (most commonly, no name at all). This is why there's a problem with Wikipedia unilaterally declaring all usages to be "CamelCase". --Dtcdthingy 15:50, 25 July 2005 (UTC)
So what are these other names? We can look them up in Google, and see if any are more common than "Camel Case". (Yes, undoubtly the computer-related usess are going to have a bias on web pages, but I don't know how to correct for that - plus to which as more of the culture moves onto the web, it becomes a better reflection of overall social usage. If you have some easy way to search printed media for the frequency of the various names, that would be most useful.) But the Wikipedia standard is to keep articles at the most common name of a person or thing, and so far I have seen no evidence that any other name is "mo[re] common". And we're not unilaterally declaring all usages to be "CamelCase" - they article explicitly says that other terms are used (see also above), and mentions many of them. Any time you have a thing that has several names, we have to pick one to put the article at, with Wikipedia:Redirects from the other - is every case in which we have done so Wikipedia unilaterally declaring that the other names are somehow inapplicable? Noel (talk) 16:09, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

I almost hate to say this, but google hits are not considered reliable sources of information. What I do want to mention is that the term 'medial capitals not only sounds more professional, but is used by the OED.

-- trlkly 11:13, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] HeLa

While scanning my 1977-vintage Shorter Oxford English Dictionary some weeks ago for interesting words for Wiktionary, I discovered the word "HeLa". Sadly I've lost my notes on this word and no longer have access to this dictionary. m-w online seems to have an entry but it's a bit confusing: it could be HeLa cell in full and is named after a person who died in 1951 but the year the word/spelling was first used is not noted. Perhaps somebody could look it up and add some comment to the article. It could very well predate all other cases except the Scottish surnames. — Hippietrail 11:20, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

The entry says "HeLa 1953 (f. the name, Helen Lane, of the patient from whom the original tissue was taken.) Used attrib. to designate a strain of human epithelial cells maintained in tissue culture and derived originally from tissue from a carcinoma of the cervix. Occas. absol." Adrian Robson 07:56, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] OuLiPo

I've just added OuLiPo which is more commonly capitalised as Oulipo but appears on as OuLiPo on the movement's official website. I saw it in CamelCase in the introduction to an English translation of one of the works of Perec or Queneau published in 1993. 1993 is also the first time it appears on Usenet in CamelCase. — Hippietrail 02:55, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

The CamelCase spelling is also used in Bill Bryson's The Mother Tongue at least in the 2001 printing. The book was originally published in 1990 but I don't yet know which spelling was used in that edition. — Hippietrail 03:39, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

The movement is much older: it was founded in 1960!. Also "OuLiPo" is an example of "French acronym style": syllable-based intead of letter-based, in order to be more prnouceable. At least I have seen a few other examples. Will try to fix that. Jorge Stolfi 16:56, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] OpenOffice.org

Surely this isn't really an example, its a website name, and as websites don't allow spaces it has to be all one word... --EAi 16:26, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Well, that's the reason it is an example, but it's worse than that anyhow -- "OpenOffice.org" is the name of the software, too. There's nothing called just "OpenOffice" anymore, but it was StarOffice and OpenOffice before it was OpenOffice.org. — mendel ☎ 16:43, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
Including domain suffixes in the name of anything other than an Internet hostname itself is something that, in a just world, would be punished by execution by firing squad. *Dan T.* 18:01, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
In this instance, ".org" was appended because an unaffiliated company owns the "OpenOffice" trademark. —Lifeisunfair 18:18, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] FedEx

The FedEx example is nonsense. FedEx does have a live registration on "Federal Express" as words (the offical phrase is 'typed drawing'), in addition to registrations of the words in certain stylized forms. The registstation number is 0971628. Please pull the example after reveiwing. 69.69.45.58 00:56, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

I don't understand what you're getting at. What's wrong with the "FedEx" example? —Lifeisunfair 01:05, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Chemistry

One possible origin (or at least influence) of CamelCase may be the use of chemical formulas in chemistry. NaCl is sodium chloride, for example, and has been for ages. Basically, any chemical element in the periodic table with a two-letter atomic symbol, used in a formula with another one, would have the appearance of being in CamelCase. Aumakua 20:01, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Timeline

I just noticed that old terms such as OuLiPo were moved out of the timeline. This makes sense in that there is a new section for prehistory and because the timeline is currently bound to a specific section which precludes prehistory. I think the timeline is a primary piece of this article and should be moved to its own section with all of the old terms replaced. Even old family names can go at the very top with no date or n/a etc. Thoughts? — Hippietrail 19:58, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Not a bad idea, except that it would make the list way too long, and it will be very hard to locate all examples. Also, building a timeline is useful when there is some genetic connection between the items; but prior to the "computer era" the uses seem fairly independent of each other.
In fact, it will be impractical to add all the modern CamelCased proper names to that list, or even those that have Wikipedia articles. I think that we should start trimming the list and keep only the most noteworthy examples. (For instance, the Guardian supplement titles seem too banal to mention.)
Perhaps we should also split the list, moving the most notable examples pre-1980 to the "early" section?
Jorge Stolfi 20:43, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
It will definitely need some judicious trimming. Maybe some full list can exist in a subpage or such but probably not worth the trouble. I think old even obscure ones and prehistoric ones are the most interesting in the timeline, the start of the flurry, the conversion to CamelCase of known companies etc no matter what era, the rest of the flurry and very modern ones is of little interest I think. — Hippietrail 18:53, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Never heard of CamelCase...

This entry does not prove a strong enough case that this style of capitalization is known predominantly as "CamelCase." Furthermore, the history of the term "CamelCase" is not presented in a way that supports such common usage.

Working in news media for more than decade, I have never heard of this term. It's always been referred to as "InterCaps" in my experience. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Navstar (talk • contribs) 03:07, 17 April 2006.

"InterCaps" is the designation with which I'm most familiar, but a couple of Google searches render it quite obvious that "CamelCase" is the more popular term. —David Levy 03:31, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
I guess it matters among whom you consider its popularity. The "geek crowd" seems to like the terminology "CamelCase", so that will do well in Google searches, but that doesn't mean it's hit the mainstream in the "outside world". *Dan T.* 03:36, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
That's a valid point, but what else do we have to go by? We have to pick one term to serve as the article's title, and the only available evidence that I know of points to "CamelCase" as the most common.
And of course, the same type of argument could be applied to "InterCaps." Navstar's professional background is in news, and I (a college student) have been exposed to the term via my studies of the print and broadcast media; perhaps this designation is prevalent mainly in the communications industries. —David Levy 04:06, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

I'd recommend calling them medial capitals throughout the article, and mentioning that the jargon terms InterCaps and CamelCase have been invented to describe the phenomenon. Like the similarly recent coinage "snowclone", there's little etymological history to the term "CamelCase", it's just a popular meme that the geek community propagates and Wikipedia has run with it. 195.173.23.111 10:29, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

Agree with 195.173. Oxford claims that the correct term is medial capitals. See this link.
-- trlkly 11:34, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] History of underscore

I know my contribution about the influence of Unix and C language system programming is not at the same level as the rest of the text. I do, however, believe that the treatment of the underscore which developed early in the C/Unix culture is notable to this article. My treatment is particularly inappropriate for dropping (more or less correctly) highly technical terms such as "translation unit" into the discussion without proper definition. I'm too close to the subject to choose a bad synonym. Feel free to abuse my text in the service of a better article. MaxEnt 17:44, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

The discussion on histor of underscore usage may be valid, but this article is about CamelCase, not underscore. I have moved that section to the underscore article. Jorge Stolfi 02:24, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Merger of content from CamelCase and Wiki

CamelCase and Wiki is short and, as a topic, directly relevant to the topic of CamelCase: CamelCase is commonly used in many wikis on the web. I suggest merging - Chris Wood 16:19, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't agree. Why is it "directly" relevant? It is, at most, an example of the use of CamelCase. It would probably be a fairly obscure one were it not for the fact that this is Wikipedia. If someone wanted to write an article on "CamelCase in Java" or "CamelCase at FedEx" or "CamelCase at Bob's Website," those would presumably also be separate articles. A link in the "See also" section seems fine to me. SnowFire 16:21, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
I think it's directly relevant because wikis are where most people will first come into contact with CamelCase as a practice and as a concept. If you were such a person and you were to go looking for "InterCaps" or "CamelCase" in the Wikipedia, you'd therefore expect to see wikis mentioned on the resulting page. If there were other pages like "CamelCase in Java" or "CamelCase at FedEx", then I'd suggest we add a section on uses and some links within it. But since this is not the case, and CamelCase and Wiki is itself short, I'd suggest not having the separation. - Chris Wood 14:33, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
I don't see how it's relevant at all and if you look at the examples of trade names that have used it (or have been mistakenly thought to have used it) you will find it's been around much longer than Wikis have. In fact, there are millions of people on this planet who regularly see CamelCase in various places and yet they've never heard of a Wiki. Or, if they have, they've never actually seen one.
No, the merger is a really bad idea, if you ask me. It would just confuse the issue. I have no qualms about a reference to CamelCase in the Wiki article and vice-versa. That makes prefect sense. --angrykeyboarder 10:01, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the comments. I still disagree, but I won't force a change. Instead, do you mind if I split off the last paragraph of the "Coding standards" section to a new section or subsection to highlight the wiki use? The link to CamelCase and Wiki is currently not prominent enough, IMHO. -- Chris Wood 10:55, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Spread to mainstream usage

Under the heading "Spread to mainstream usage", the article states:

"During the same period in which personal computers exposed hacker culture to a more mainstream audience in the 1980s and 1990s, CamelCase became fashionable for corporate trade names, first in computer-related fields but later expanding further into the mainstream."

However, the list that follows is only weak support for this thesis, since the first two entries in the list, ShopKo and AstroTurf, have nothing to do with computers. Also, the article earlier mentions CinemaScope and VistaVision, which go back to the 1950s; it's a little odd to have this long list of camelcased trademarks beginning in 1962, so that the list excludes the very first instances (like CinemaScope). --Mathew5000 16:19, 21 June 2006 (UTC)\\

This section also suffers from severe overlinking. — VoxLuna 17:02, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Background: multi-word identifiers -- Cobol, Fortran

I deleted "pioneer" from "pioneer programming language COBOL". COBOL is hardly a pioneering programming language http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programming_language_timeline.

I deleted all the Fortran text -- "The contemporary "algebraic" language Fortran reserved the hyphen as the minus operator, but allowed spaces to be arbitrarily embedded into identifiers, so that "TOTAMP" could be written "TOT AMP" (or "TO TAMP"). (This feature was of little use, however, because most Fortran compilers did not allow identifiers longer than six letters.)".

While Fortran did allow spaces in identifiers, the sentence above implies that Fortran had that rule as CamelCase stated it and "so that" implies design intent for that rule. Neither is the case. The Fortran rule was that blanks were not significant - you could embed blanks in anything: identifiers, keywords, operators, numerical values, .... The actual Fortran rule does not contribute to the multi-word identifier discussion. Rwwww 04:47, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

OK about the use of spaces and the six-letter limit. However, the rest of the sentence is relevant, IMHO: it explains why FORTRAN (and Algol) did not adopt the COBOL solution. Jorge Stolfi 02:29, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] In Germany

When did spellings like KaDeWe become in vogue?

[edit] PascalCase is not camelCase

I take issue with the inclusion of PascalCase as a type of camelCase. To me, the two are different, though similar, styles to type multiple words without spaces. This article states that PascalCase is a type of camelCase. I disagree. Another person brought up the same issue and the response was basically "Read the article, where we say that PascalCase is a type of camelCase." I disagree.

First of all, not going into the history of the style itself, but the terminology of "PascalCase" and "camelCase" are unique to computer programming. As such, my recollection of the history in that arena is that in the beginning, there was C. K&R bequoth that underscore style be used. ALL_CAPS for #define's, and all all_lowers for variables. I forget about constants. Eventually PascalCase became en vogue, though it wasn't called that. Hungarian was still PascalCase, but required an al (all lower, abbreviated) prefix. It wasn't until 1995 when Java hit the scene that I remember camelCase, and it had a specific purpose to distinguish it from PascalCase. I have no doubt though that Mesa used it first. It wasn't until years later that read this specific verbiage to differentiate the two, but they were definitely described as different things.

I believe that the two names should be seperated into different articles with links between them. What reasons are there to include them as one, and what reasons are there to make PascalCase a "type" of camelCase?

Dmprantz 04:12, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Use in given names

The article should make reference to the increased popularity of given names (at least in the United States) that follow this convention: DeShawn, JaMarcus, LaTisha, etc. Or is there already an article discussing this? Funnyhat 00:09, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wikiword

How is this Wikiword? I was under the impression that a "wikiword" was challenging way of gaining a new password, for example Monday: letter A- main page, first link starting with a is Your Password for that day, Tuesday: type in that word then first link starting with b etc, it is a very safe way of making sure no-one knows your password, (a+b were an example only). Most companies use a variation of this method. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Thedec (talk • contribs) 14:36, 22 March 2007 (UTC). D. BULL 12:17, 23 March 2007 (UTC) there its signed now

[edit] Wrong wrong wrong

]

Pascal case is NOT Camel case! The articles definition of upper Camel case and lower Camel case are in fact Pascal case and Camel case.

I'll explain this in the same manor as one of my University professors. Look at the picture of the camel. See the humps? See the space before the humps, between the humps, and after the humps? Put two or more words together and make them look like the camel.

For example,

articleContainsErrors
Funny, that picture looks to me like HeadHumpHump, not headHumpHump... ;-) 66.80.71.162 20:14, 19 June 2007 (UTC)
To me it looks more like H_eadHumpHump... (shudder!) 8-) --Jorge Stolfi 19:11, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] TitleCase

Is TitleCase different from Title case - capitalizing almost all words, but leaving the spaces in? 203.13.2.142 01:12, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

I've only ever come across 'Title Case'; each word separated by spaces and the first letter of each word capitalised. I've never heard of 'camelCase' being called 'Title Case'. Let me know if you have a good source. peterl 03:38, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Scottish CamelCase

Can you call the capitalisation patterns in McDonalds and McMurdo an example of CamelCase? Carcharoth 17:12, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

That's an interesting one that I never considered before. I'd have no idea really.--h i s s p a c e r e s e a r c h 13:49, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] History -- Origins

Hi -- none of the history section has reliable citations and one has been tagged as original research for quite some time. These "histories" are beginning to be propagated around the Internet--if they're correct and cited, that's great. If they're not verifiable, this is a bad thing. I'm going to cut these sections in a few days--down to the smallest sections that have any sources. They will still be in the article histories if someone wants to bring them back with reliable sources. -- Myke Cuthbert (talk) 15:15, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

As stated in the article, the two theories are just that at the moment; but the lack of references should not be reason enough to omit them altogether.
As for the 'Alto keyboard' theory, I programmed in Mesa on the Alto, both at Stanford and at Xerox PARC, and I can attest that indeed the Alto keyboard had no underscore key; so the Mesa satandard necessarily adopted CamelCase. Moreover, one of the people who were at PARC when the Alto was designed told me (ca. 1990) that indeed CamelCase had been adopted because of the keyboard, rather than vice-versa. (Unfortunately I forgot his last name --- John something...)
As for the 'lazy programmer' theory, I am not sure where I heard it, but I believe that it is the justification that most CamelCase lovers give for preferring it to underscore.
I also heard from PARC old-timers that Wirth adopted CamelCase for Modula because he got used to it during his sabatical at PARC. Jorge Stolfi 02:52, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Free link redirects here...

...but the article doesn't describe what a free link is. Shinobu 10:33, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Usage in IDEs

I added a little blurb at the end of the "Programming style" section that shows how more complex IDEs can utilize the CamelCase convention for coding shortcuts. I use Eclipse in the example, simply because that's where I discovered CamelCase-based shortcuts, but if anyone think that sounds biased to Eclipse, please feel free to neutralize it. Endasil 20:13, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Misleading

The article defines CamelCase as using an initial capital letter, but it is in fact commonly defined as having a lower case initial letter (see "Wrong wrong wrong" above). The only relevant reference (number 2) defines CamelCase as having a lower case intial letter, contradicting the article. See also http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/x2dbyw72(VS.71).aspx. The article, if not completely wrong, should make it clear that there are competing definitions of Camel Case. - AR 16:06, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

  • The article already does that, right away: see the "Variations and Synonyms" section.
    Surely most people will understand the term 'CamelCase' as covering both variants. (If it didn't, how would one refer to the other variant?).
    The reference you cite is not the definitive authority: the term is quite a bit older than dot-NET, and is not "owned" by Microsoft...
    All the best, Jorge Stolfi 19:08, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Following your recent re-wording, I agree that the article is now clear. I've removed the misleading tag. Thanks. - AR 194.74.194.214 09:04, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The 'Background: multi-word identifiers' part

It's second paragraph starts with:
'Some early programming languages, notably Lisp (1958) and COBOL (1959), addressed this problem by allowing a hyphen ("-") to be used between words of compound identifiers, as in "END-OF-FILE". However, this solution was not adequate for algebraic-oriented languages like FORTRAN (1955) and ALGOL (1958), which needed the hyphen as a subtraction operator.'

Well, that's not exactly true. It's not that Lisp is more primitive than Algol or Fortran because it permits using a hyphen inside a variable name. In Fortran, Algol or other languages with similar syntax you could write something like 'foo-bar-baz' instead of 'foo - bar - baz' to save space. But in Lisp, where you use Polish (prefix) notation, you can write just '(- foo bar baz)', so allowing the programmer to skip the first space would make the code actually more confusing to potential reader. That's why Lisp dialects force programmers to always use space as a separator, thus allowing the use of special characters inside variable names. 212.122.214.3 (talk) 22:39, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Names

Hello,

Would the first name 'LeToya' be consindered CamelCase? As this is a name and not just a compound word made for commercial reasons, it might be different. —Preceding unsigned comment added by LAUBO (talk • contribs) 20:23, 1 May 2008 (UTC)