unicode as valid naming symbols

[Antoon Pardon]

On 01-04-14 11:18, Ian Kelly wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 1, 2014 at 2:19 AM, Antoon Pardon
> <antoon.pardon at rece.vub.ac.be> wrote:
>> On 01-04-14 02:47, Ian Kelly wrote:
>>
>>> Well, this is the path taken by APL.  It has its supporters.  It's not
>>> known for being readable.
>> No that is not the path taken by APL. AFAICS identifiers in APL are just
>> like identifiers in python. The path taken by APL was that there were
>> a lot more operators available that used non-alphanumeric characters.
>>
>> AFICS APL programs tend to be unreadable because they are mostly written
>> in a very concise style.
>>
>> I think this is more the path taken by lisp-like languages where '+' is
>> a name just like 'alpha' or 'r2d2'. In scheme I can just do the following.
>>
>> (define √ sqrt)
>> (√ 4)
> You're still using the symbol as the name of an operation, though, so
> I see no practical difference from the APL style.  The operation just
> happens to be user-defined rather than built-in.

Python also uses symbols for names of operations, like '+'. And when
someone suggested python might consider increasing the number of
operations and gave some symbols for those extra operations, nobody
suggested that would make python unreadable, though it would be far
more like the path taken by APL then what we are discussing now.

But the idea we are discussing here has nothing to do with introducing
more operators and use symbolic characters for that and as such wouldn't
make python more APL like. You only bring up APL because it uses a number
of unfamilar symbols and you attribute the unreadabilty of APL programs
mostly to that. But regarding the functionality we are talking here
APL doesn't have it. So we are not talking about the path taken by
APL.


-- 
Antoon Pardon