PEP 3131: Supporting Non-ASCII Identifiers

[Eric Brunel]

On Sun, 13 May 2007 23:55:11 +0200, Bruno Desthuilliers  
<bdesth.quelquechose at free.quelquepart.fr> wrote:

> Martin v. Löwis a écrit :
>> PEP 1 specifies that PEP authors need to collect feedback from the
>> community. As the author of PEP 3131, I'd like to encourage comments
>> to the PEP included below, either here (comp.lang.python), or to
>> python-3000 at python.org
>>  In summary, this PEP proposes to allow non-ASCII letters as
>> identifiers in Python. If the PEP is accepted, the following
>> identifiers would also become valid as class, function, or
>> variable names: Löffelstiel, changé, ошибка, or 売り場
>> (hoping that the latter one means "counter").
>>  I believe this PEP differs from other Py3k PEPs in that it really
>> requires feedback from people with different cultural background
>> to evaluate it fully - most other PEPs are culture-neutral.
>>  So, please provide feedback, e.g. perhaps by answering these
>> questions:
>> - should non-ASCII identifiers be supported?
>
> No.
>
>> why?
>
> Because it will definitivly make code-sharing impossible. Live with it  
> or else, but CS is english-speaking, period. I just can't understand  
> code with spanish or german (two languages I have notions of)  
> identifiers, so let's not talk about other alphabets...

+1 on everything.

> NB : I'm *not* a native english speaker, I do *not* live in an english  
> speaking country,

... and so am I (and this happens to be the same country as Bruno's...)

> and my mother's language requires non-ascii encoding.

... and so does my wife's (she's Japanese).

> And I don't have special sympathy for the USA. And yes, I do write my  
> code - including comments - in english.

Again, +1. Even when writing code that appears to be "private" at some  
time, one *never* knows what will become of it in the future. If it ever  
goes public, its chances to evolve - or just to be maintained - are far  
bigger if it's written all in english.
-- 
python -c "print ''.join([chr(154 - ord(c)) for c in  
'U(17zX(%,5.zmz5(17l8(%,5.Z*(93-965$l7+-'])"