Talk:Abbreviations, simple

Case of output

Surely if I preprocess the command table to "Add ALTer ..." then this is the same task as Abbreviations, easy. Now if you require the output to be case specific, well then at least there is some point.--Nigel Galloway (talk) 12:59, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

If you choose to pre-process the table, I'm fine with it.   However, that would make it harder to compare your computer program example to others who don't opt to do the pre-processing and create   another   abbreviation table.   (I'm assuming that you don't/won't destroy the original abbreviation table in the process).   And the output (as per the illustration/example)   is   case specific   (all uppercase except for   *error*,   which is used as "an error notification flag").   And yes, if you pre-process the table in the manner you stated, then it's pretty much the same task as the Rosetta Code task   Abbreviations, easy.   But, the objective was to use the table as is   (this wasn't stated, but I didn't want to hamper some people's programming algorithms)   without creating another abbreviation table.   It never occurred to me that someone would want to pre-process the abbreviation table and create another abbreviation table.   This is why I created three tasks for three of the various types of an abbreviation table.   Creating another abbreviation table can be problematic when the abbreviation table is very large.   Another pitfall is that the code could be in a subroutine (and the subroutine would be invoked for each option specified), and there maybe is no access/ability to obtaining more memory (virtual storage), etc.   Gerard Schildberger (talk) 13:33, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

The only point to have this task in addition to the "easy" task is that using numbers to specify the length would allow preserving the case in the command table. So there is no point in converting the words to uppercase. (You could as well write the word in upper case in the command table directly.) So I think the words should not be converted to upper case. That would make this task a little bit different from the other task. --PauliKL (talk) 14:56, 23 February 2020 (UTC)

Allowing the preservation of the case of the command table was never a consideration for this Rosetta Code task.   The command table is to be considered immutable, as in this case, it is "owned" by (the) editor which uses this command table.   The words (commands) need to be converted to uppercase because that is what this task requires   (and, as it happens, it's also what's required by the editor).   It believe it would be too late to eliminate (change) this task's requirement at this late date.     -- Gerard Schildberger (talk) 15:43, 23 February 2020 (UTC)