What is Caps Lock good for?

Question

1. Do you find CAPS LOCK useful, and for what?
2. Do you use any funky scripts or programs that change default behaviour of the key?

Answer 1

VERY rare to use it. I have a Sun keyboard where the control and caps lock are in their proper places (swapped from "normal" convention).

Answer 2

IS THERE ANY REASON TO EVER, EVER USE THE CAPS LOCK KEY?

Answer 3

Never use it. I'd like to disable it if it was easy and reliable to do so.

Answer 4

No........

Answer 5

I only use it when I program in BASIC.

Answer 6

Whenever I try to use my caps lock, I also try to use regular sentence case. tHEREFORE, i OFTEN HAVE SENTENCES THAT LOOK LIKE THIS. Because of this, I rarely use that key

Answer 7

I don't. I do know someone who uses it instead of shift however.

Answer 8

Yes, some types of programming do use the caps lock key. For example, in C and C++ it is common for constants to be in all caps.

Also, some organizations have coding standards that require certain things to be in all caps. For example, I worked somewhere that required that all SQL keywords be in all caps.

I'm not saying this is a good thing. I'm just saying that I often use my caps lock key, and I'd be unhappy if I had to hold down the Shift key instead.

Answer 9

I use it all the time!

I like flipping the light on my keyboard while I'm thinking.

Answer 10

I've been known to map it for games, but my typical usage of capslock is only on that rare occasion when I'm writing more caps than lowercase. Especially when I'M MAKING A JOKE IN IM ABOUT PEOPLE WHO DON'T HAVE AN INSIDE VOICE or I'm mocking VisiSoft's VSE.

Column 8 is your friend; lower-case letters in source code are a complicated and redundant way for software programmers to ensure job security.

Answer 11

Yes, I have it remapped to CTRL. It's much more useful that way.

Answer 12

I'm surprised at the lack of obscene comments about using it while typing one handed.

Answer 13

Yes, I do use it, in the following situations:

1 - If I am coding something where all-caps is a reasonable convention, such as CONSTANT_NAME = 5;

2 - I know this is a holy war, but I do like to type SQL keywords in all-caps.

But those uses don't really justify the position on the keyboard. It should probably be up where scroll lock is.

Answer 14

I sometimes use the flipping LED to see if the PC has locked up. But, if necessary, I could switch to NumLock.

Answer 15

CAPS LOCK IS CRUISE CONTROL FOR COOL

Answer 16

I never use the Caps Lock key. In fact, I've taken to remapping it. I've had two laptops now that, because of the placement of the trackpad, my hands always seem to be a little too far left. I remap the Caps Lock key to be another 'A'. I still have a problem being shifted left, but at least I don't go into caps mode.

Answer 17

I press my caps-lock key constantly, it just doesn't produce the caps-lock function. I use Sysinternals Ctrl2cap to make it my Ctrl key, which is much more logical. It's my Ctrl key that I never, ever, touch.

Answer 18

NO I NEVER USE IT.

Answer 19

I do use caps-lock occasionally:

• To type TLAs and other acronyms.
• The Python convention is that constants should be named in ALL_CAPS_WITH_UNDERSCORE style.
• SQL is traditionally written with way too many uppercase words. I tend to follow this tardition (sic!) sometimes.

I tried once to swap my caps-lock and ctrl keys, but I switched back. The reason: being a touch-typist, I use both the right-ctrl and the left-ctrl keys. I find it disturbing if both ctrl keys are not in symmetrical positions, and all the keyboards I know have only one caps-lock key on the left.

Answer 20

Enso uses the caps lock key open the command window.

Answer 21

I use caps lock when playing Oblivion (or one of a handful of other games), where it functions as a sticky run toggle. Other than that, its only function in my life is to make me curse at whoever chose it should exist because I accidentally hit it instead of shift.

On non-gaming systems, I have it mapped to either ctrl or nothing, depending on my mood when setting up the mapping.

Answer 22

Well, if you program in LOLCODE you have no choice.

Answer 23

Yes, I use it a lot! Now that I changed it behavior with AutoHotkey...

; A substitute for AltGr key: no need for finger gym.
; Plus provide alternative way to get some other special chars
; that I usually get with Alt+Numpad0 Numpad... and others with the char applet.
; Type CapsLock followed by a key below to get the corresponding character.
CapsLock::
    Input key, I L1 T2, {Escape}
    el := ErrorLevel
    If (el = "Timeout" or el = "EndKey:Escape")
    {
     ; Timeout (or escaped), do nothing
     Goto NoCapsLock
    }
    pos := InStr(keysCapsLock, key, true)
    If (pos > 0)
    {
     StringMid c, charsCapsLock, pos, 1
     ; Manage dead-keys by adding a space after
     If c in ~,``,^
      c := c . " "
    }
    Else If key in !,?,:,;, ,`%,q
    {
     If (key = "q")
      c := "’"
     Else If (key = " ")
      c := " "
     Else
      c := " " . key
    }
    Else
    {
     c := key
    }
    SendRaw %c%
Return

; To call from Auto-execute section
CapsLockAltGr:
    keysCapsLock = "'(-_à)=eaAoO0279<>éèç
    charsCapsLock = #{[|\@]}€æÆœŒÀÉÈÇ«»~``^
Return

; If timeout or Escape to cancel the CapsLock, warn the user
NoCapsLock:
    ToolTip CapsLock: %el% %key%
    SetTimer RemoveToolTip, 1000
Return

And I still can lock caps (although I never do it) with Ctrl+CapsLock anyway.
OK, it is more useful for people using accented characters (I am French) but it can be still an interesting abbreviation expander.

I also do:

Numlock::   Return

because I don't want to go out of numeric keypad mode accidently.

Answer 24

I use Caps lock to enter postcodes and social security "number" into phishing sites. So all the time :-)
( The UK use capital letters and numbers for postcodes and socsec 'numbers', not just numbers. )

Answer 25

I remap caps lock to be another CTRL key. Very useful.

Answer 26

vi/vim users may find it useful to map it to ESC.

But I've always used backspace for that instead.

Answer 27

As Martinho mentions, people who learned on typewriters commonly use caps lock.

I learned to type on a long-throw manual typewriter with heavy typebars. As a child, my pinky finger was not physically strong enough to hold the shift key down for more than a stroke or two. Worse yet, often I would miss and my pinky finger would slide between the keys which hurt like mad because the underside of the keys would scrape the skin off when you pulled your finger back out again.

I quickly learned to use shift-lock (typewriter version of caps lock) to avoid the shift key on anything longer than a single keystroke.

Answer 28

Yes, the caps-lock is pretty useful to me. To make sure programmers recognize pre-processor defines in C (since it is often necessary to distinguish those from variables and real functions), which can either be constant values or method like defines, e.g.

#define MAX_BUFFER_SIZE (10 * 1024)
#define MAX(x, y) ((x > y) ? (x) : (y))

and sometimes those defines get pretty long:

MY_COMPANY_STANDARD_URL_ADDRESS

and longer. Further in Objective-C exist no namespaces, so it is pretty common to prefix all classes with some company or framework unique string. Those strings are usually all upper case, too (not that they have to, but that is common convention).

And if you have to type a real lot of those defines and prefixes, using caps-lock makes typing those so much easier and faster.

Answer 29

It's useful for writing in old languages like COBOL or GW-BASIC. I don't, so I remapped my Caps Lock key as the Compose key.