PEP 3131: Supporting Non-ASCII Identifiers

[Bruno Desthuilliers]

Stefan Behnel a écrit :
> Anton Vredegoor wrote:
> 
>>>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 am against this PEP for the following reasons:
>>
>>It will split up the Python user community into different language or
>>interest groups without having any benefit as to making the language
>>more expressive in an algorithmic way.
> 
> 
> 
> We must distinguish between "identifiers named in a non-english language" and
> "identifiers written with non-ASCII characters".
> 
> While the first is already allowed as long as the transcription uses only
> ASCII characters, the second is currently forbidden and is what this PEP is about.
> 
> So, nothing currently keeps you from giving names to identifiers that are
> impossible to understand by, say, Americans (ok, that's easy anyway).
> 
> For example, I could write
> 
>   def zieheDreiAbVon(wert):
>       return zieheAb(wert, 3)
 >
> and most people on earth would not have a clue what this is good for.

Which is exactly why I don't agree with adding support with non-ascii 
identifiers. Using non-english identifiers should be strongly 
discouraged, not openly supported.

> However,
> someone who is fluent enough in German could guess from the names what this does.
> 
> I do not think non-ASCII characters make this 'problem' any worse.

It does, by openly stating that it's ok to write unreadable code and 
offering support for it.

> So I must
> ask people to restrict their comments to the actual problem that this PEP is
> trying to solve.

Sorry, but we can't dismiss the side-effects. Learning enough 
CS-oriented technical english to actually read and write code and 
documentation is not such a big deal - even I managed to to so, and I'm 
a bit impaired when it comes to foreign languages.