PEP 3131: Supporting Non-ASCII Identifiers - ambiguity issues

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Tue, 15 May 2007 10:44:37 -0700, John Nagle wrote:

> We have to have visually unique identifiers.

Well, Python has existed for years without such a requirement, so I think 
"have to" is too strong a term.

Compare:

thisisareallylongbutcompletelylegalidentiferandnotvisuallyuniqueataglance 

with 

thisisareallylongbutcompletelylegalidentiferadnnotvisuallyuniqueataglance

I imagine, decades ago, people arguing against the introduction of long 
identifiers because of the risk that their projects will be flooded with 
Black Hats trying to slip one over them by using the vulnerability cause 
by really long identifiers. I can just see people banging away on their 
keyboard, swearing black and blue that identifiers of more than four 
characters are completely unnecessary (who needs more than 450,000 
variables in a program?) and will just cause the End Of Programming As We 
Know It.



rn = m = None
IIl0 = IlIO = None

I'm sure that the Python community has zero sympathy for anyone 
suggesting that Python should _enforce_ rules like "don't use a single l 
as an identifier", even if they have complete sympathy with anybody who 
has such a rule in their own projects.


-- 
Steven.