PEP 3131: Supporting Non-ASCII Identifiers

[André]

On May 13, 12:44 pm, "Martin v. Löwis" <mar... at v.loewis.de> wrote:
> 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-3... 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? why?

I use to think differently.  However, I would say a strong YES.  They
would be extremely useful when teaching programming.

> - would you use them if it was possible to do so? in what cases?

Only if I was teaching native French speakers.

> Policy Specification
> ====================
>
> As an addition to the Python Coding style, the following policy is
> prescribed: All identifiers in the Python standard library MUST use
> ASCII-only identifiers, and SHOULD use English words wherever feasible.
>

I would add something like:

Any module released for general use SHOULD use ASCII-only identifiers
in the public API.

Thanks for this initiative.

André