PEP 3131: Supporting Non-ASCII Identifiers

[Paul Rubin]

"Martin v. Löwis" <martin at v.loewis.de> writes:
> So, please provide feedback, e.g. perhaps by answering these
> questions:
> - should non-ASCII identifiers be supported? why?

No, and especially no without mandatory declarations of all variables.
Look at the problems of non-ascii characters in domain names and the
subsequent invention of Punycode.  Maintaining code that uses those
identifiers in good faith will already be a big enough hassle, since
it will require installing and getting familiar with keyboard setups
and editing tools needed to enter those characters.  Then there's the
issue of what happens when someone tries to slip a malicious patch
through a code review on purpose, by using homoglyphic characters
similar to the way domain name phishing works.  Those tricks have also
been used to re-insert bogus articles into Wikipedia, circumventing
administrative blocks on the article names.

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

I would never insert them into a program.  In existing programs where
they were used, I would remove them everywhere I could.