Areas of significance[edit]

Case sensitivity may differ depending on the situation:

 Searching: Users expect information retrieval systems to be able to have correct case
sensitivity depending on the nature of an operation. Users looking for the word "dog" in an
online journal probably does not wish to differentiate between "dog" or "Dog", as this is a
writing distinction; the word should be matched whether it appears at the beginning of a
sentence or not. On the other hand, users looking for information about a brand name,
trademark, human name, or city name may be interested in performing a case-sensitive
operation to filter out irrelevant results. For example, somebody searching for the name
"Jade" would not want to find references to the mineral called "jade".
 Usernames: Authentication systems usually treat usernames as case-insensitive to
facilitate memorization, reducing typing complexity, and eliminate the possibility of both
mistake and fraud when two usernames are identical in every aspect except the case of one
of their letters. However, these systems are not case-blind. They preserve the case of the
characters in the name so that users may choose an aesthetically pleasing combination.
 Passwords: Authentication systems usually treat passwords as case-sensitive. This
enables the users to increase the complexity of their passwords.
 File names: Traditionally, Unix-like operating systems treat file case-sensitively
while Microsoft Windows is case-insensitive but, for most file systems, case-preserving. For
more details, see below.
 Variable names: Some programming languages are case-sensitive for their variable
names while others are not. For more details, see below.
 URLs: The path, query, fragment, and authority sections of a URL may or may not be
case-sensitive, depending on the receiving web server. The scheme and host parts,
however, are strictly lowercase.