M.-A. Lemburg wrote: > You even argued against having non-ASCII identifiers: > > http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/2002-May/102936.html
I see :-) It seems I have changed my mind since then (which apparently predates PEP 263). One issue I apparently was worried about was the plan to use native-encoding byte strings for the identifiers; this I didn't like at all. > * Unicode identifiers are going to introduce massive > code breakage - just think of all the tools people use > to manipulate Python code today; I'm quite sure that > most of it will fail in one way or another if you present > it Unicode literals such as in "zähler += 1". True. Today, I think I would be willing to accept the code breakage: these tools had quite some time to update themselves to PEP 263 (even though not all of them have done so yet); also, usage of the feature would only spread gradually. A failure to support the feature in the Python proper would be treated as a bug by us; how tool providers deal with the feature would be their choice. > * People don't seem very interested in using Unicode > identifiers, e.g. > > http://mail.python.org/pipermail/i18n-sig/2001-February/000828.html True. However, I also suspect that lack of tool support contributes to that. For the specific case of Java, there is no notion of source encoding, which makes Unicode identifiers really tedious to use. If it were really easy to use, I assume people would actually use it - atleast in some of the contexts, like teaching, where Python is also widely used. > Do you really think that it will help with code readability > if programmers are allowed to use native scripts for their > identifiers ? Yes, I do - for some groups of users. Of course, code sharing would be more difficult, and there certainly should be a policy to use only ASCII in the standard library. But within local groups, users would find understanding code easier if they knew what the identifiers actually meant. > If you are told to debug a program > written by say a Japanese programmer using Japanese identifiers > you are going to have a really hard time. Integrating such > code into other applications will be even harder, since you'd > be forced to use his Japanese class names in your application. Certainly, yes. There is a trade-off: you can make it easier for some people to read and write code if they can use their native script; at the same time, it would be harder for others to read and modify it. It's a policy decision whether you use English identifiers or not - it shouldn't be a technical decision (as it currently is). > I think source code encodings provide an ideal way to > have comments written in native scripts - and people > use that a lot. However, keeping the program code itself > in plain ASCII makes it far more readable and reusable > across locales. Something that's important in this > globalized world. Certainly. However, some programs don't need to live in a globalized world - e.g. if they are homework in a school. Within a locale, using native scripts would make the program more readable. Regards, Martin _______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com
