PEP 3131: Supporting Non-ASCII Identifiers

[Stefan Behnel]

Jarek Zgoda schrieb:
> Martin v. Löwis napisał(a):

Uuups, is that a non-ASCII character in there? Why don't you keep them out of
an English speaking newsgroup?


>> So, please provide feedback, e.g. perhaps by answering these
>> questions:
>> - should non-ASCII identifiers be supported? why?
> 
> No, because "programs must be written for people to read, and only
> incidentally for machines to execute". Using anything other than "lowest
> common denominator" (ASCII) will restrict accessibility of code.

No, but it would make it a lot easier for a lot of people to use descriptive
names. Remember: we're all adults here, right?


> While I can read the code with Hebrew, Russian or Greek names
> transliterated to ASCII, I would not be able to read such code in native.

Then maybe it was code that was not meant to be read by you?

In the (not so small) place where I work, we tend to use descriptive names *in
German* for the code we write, mainly for reasons of domain clarity. The
*only* reason why we still use the (simple but ugly) ASCII-transcription
(ü->ue etc.) for identifiers is that we program in Java and Java lacks a
/reliable/ way to support non-ASCII characters in source code. Thanks to PEP
263 and 3120, Python does not suffer from this problem, but it suffers from
the bigger problem of not *allowing* non-ASCII characters in identifiers. And
I believe that's a rather arbitrary decision.

The more I think about it, the more I believe that this restriction should be
lifted. 'Any' non-ASCII identifier should be allowed where developers decide
that it makes sense.

Stefan