Maintaining identifier capitalization in the IDE
lazarus / 9-Editor

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tfurnivall · 2025-08-24 21:13

I wonder if it would be useful for the IDE to maintain the canonic
form of capitalization of an identifier when it recurs. The canonic
form would be the form when the identifier is first defined (as a
const, type, var, procedure or function). From the point of view of
the correctness of the source program, of course, it makes no
difference, but it does seem to make the program easier to read.

At the risk of offending any Emerson fans, this is the sort of thing
that would (I imagine) be fairly easy to implement, and the
consistency would have a beneficial cosmetic effect. Perhaps as Yet
Another Option?

Tony

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Martin_fr · 2025-08-24 21:40

I don't know if anyone currently plans to implement that. (Even if it
is certainly may be useful to some)

But a couple of things are already there. Depending on what suits you.

1) code completion

If you hit ctrl-space you get a list of declared identifiers => afaik
they come in the case in which they were declared. 

And in the options you can enable fully automatic ident-completion.
Not just after "dot", but all the time, whenever you start typing any
word. So you always get the dropdown with the declared idents.

2) syncro edit
If you have code that needs identifiers to be "corrected". Syncro edit
works well for local vars.

Select the entire procedure, press ctrl-j

Now any word (up to the first iirc 50) that has multiple occurrence,
will be connected with all its occurrences. Edit any one, and the
other follow.
Even if you just rewrite one of them exactly as it already is there,
then the others get the same upper/lower case.

3) Rename Identifier
Can be used to correct spelling on a wider scope

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tfurnivall · 2025-08-24 21:49

Thanks, Martin_fr

I'll explore these options.

Tony

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DomingoGP · 2025-08-25 07:55

The ide Jedi code format has this option.

See Options->JCF Format settings -> Capitalisation -> Normalization of
capitalisation.

Although it only takes into account identifiers within the same unit
(i.e., it does not take into account the original definition in a unit
used in the uses clause).
It uses the first use of the identifier in the source file as canonic
form.