> The only objection that comes to mind is that adding such support may > make some distinct identifiers visually indistinguishable. IIRC the DNS > system has had this problem, leading to much phishing abuse.
This is a commonly-raised objection, but I don't understand why people see it as a problem. The phishing issue surely won't apply, as you normally don't "click" on identifiers, but rather type them. In a phishing case, it is normally difficult to type the fake character (because the phishing relies on you mistaking the character for another one, so you would type the wrong identifier). People have mentioned that this could be used to obscure your code - but there are so many ways to write obscure code that I don't see a problem in adding yet another way. People also mentioned that they might mistake identifiers in a regular, non-phishing, non-joking scenario, because they can't tell whether the second letter of MAXLINESIZE is a Latin A or Greek Alpha. I find that hard to believe - if the rest of the identifier is Latin, the A surely also is Latin, and if the rest is Greek, it's likely an Alpha. The issue is only with single-letter identifiers, and those are most common as local variables. Then, it's an Alpha if there is also a Beta and a Gamma as a local variable - if you have B and C also, it's likely A. > I don't necessarily think that the objection is strong enough to reject > the idea -- programmers using non-ASCII symbols would be responsible for > the consequences of their character choice. Indeed. Martin -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list