On 25/05/13 09:41, bob gailer wrote:
On 5/22/2013 1:02 AM, Andrew Triplett wrote:
... illegal variable names ...
That is a very poor description. Something can either be used as a variable
name or not.
abc can be used as a variable name, if can't.
But it can be used as a variable name in some languages. "if" is at least
*potentially* a variable name, in the sense that somebody might try to use it as a name.
I defy you to give me a variable name that is illegal! Anything you attempt to
give in that category is not a variable name.
While you are strictly correct, you are missing the point of the exercise,
which is to distinguish between strings which can be used as variable names:
pedant
variable
constant
this_is_not_a_variable
pi
tau
alpha1234
and those that can't:
1234alpha
*$%^
for
return
this-is-a-variable
A better name for this is "identifier" rather than "variable name", and Python
3 defines a string method to test whether or not something is a valid identifier:
http://docs.python.org/3/library/stdtypes.html#str.isidentifier
--
Steven
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