[Python-Dev] Shouldn't I be able to print Unicode objects?

[Tim Peters]

[/F]
> I don't get it.  If people use non-ascii characters, they're clearly not
> using Python.  from the language reference:

My *first* reply in this thread said the lang ref required this.  That
doesn't mean people read the ref.  IIRC, you were one of the most strident
complainers about list.append(1, 2, 3) "breaking", so just rekindle that
mindset but intensify it fueled by nationalism <0.5 wink>.

> ...
> either change the specification, and break every single tool written by
> anyone who actually bothered to read the specification [1], or add a
> warning to 2.2.

This is up to Guido; doesn't affect my code one way or the other (and, yes,
e.g., IDLE's parser follows the manual here).

> ...
> 1) I assume the specification didn't exist when GvR wrote the first
> CPython implementation ;-)

Thanks to the magic of CVS, you can see that the BNF for identifiers has
remained unchanged since it was first checked in (Thu Nov 21 13:53:03 1991
rev 1.1 of ref1.tex).  The problem is that locale was a new-fangled idea
then, and I believe Guido simply didn't anticipate isalpha() and isalnum()
would vary across non-EBCDIC platforms.