the meaning of rﾕ.......ï¾

[Henrik Faber]

On 23.07.2012 16:19, Chris Angelico wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 23, 2012 at 11:52 PM, Henrik Faber <hfaber at invalid.net> wrote:
>> What about × vs x? Or Ì vs Í vs Î vs Ï vs Ĩ vs Ī vs ī vs Ĭ vs ĭ vs Į vs
>> į vs I vs İ? Do you think if you need to maintain such code you'll
>> immediately know the difference between the 13 (!) different "I"s I just
>> happened to pull out randomly you need to chose and how to get it? What
>> about Ȝ vs ȝ? Or Ȣ vs ȣ? Or ȸ vs ȹ? Or d vs Ԁ vs ԁ vs ԃ vs Ԃ? Or ց vs g?
>> Or ս vs u?
> 
> If they're different characters, they're different. It's not unlike
> the confusion you can already get between uppercase I and lowercase l,
> or between uppercase and lowercase of the same letter, or between rn
> and m, or between any other of myriad confusingly-similar pairs that
> can be found just in ASCII.

But your reasoning is flawed: bascially you're saying some things are
already confusing, so it's just fine to add more confusion. It is not in
my opinion.

And that the computer can differentiate different characters is also
perfectly clear to me. The interpreter can also tell the difference
between a non-breaking space and a regular space. Yet the non breaking
space is not valid for a identifying character. This is because
readability counts.

People write and maintain code, not machines. Confusion should be kept
to the miminum if possible.

> Of course, SOMEBODY is going to make use of those to improve upon this
> sort of code:
> 
> http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Uppity.aspx

If that was written by my coworkers, I'd strangle them.

Regards,
Henrik