unicode as valid naming symbols

Rustom Mody rustompmody at gmail.com
Thu Mar 27 13:41:54 EDT 2014


On Thursday, March 27, 2014 9:52:40 PM UTC+5:30, Ian wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 9:28 AM, Mark H Harris wrote:
> >> Do you think that the ability to write this would be an improvement?
> >> import ⌺
> >> ⌚ = ⌺.╩░
> >> ⑥ = 5*⌺.⋨⋩
> >> ❹ = ⑥ - 1
> >> ♅⚕⚛ = [⌺.✱✳**⌺.❇*❹{⠪|⌚.∣} for ⠪ in ⌺.⣚]
> >> ⌺.˘˜¨´՛՜(♅⚕⚛)
> >    Steven, you're killing me here; argument by analogy does not work!

> That's not an analogy.  That's an example of valid Python code if
> arbitrary Unicode characters could be used to name identifiers.

Python has other lexical categories than identifier-chars eg operators.
Enriching that set is a somewhat different direction from 
enriching the identifier charset.

Note both these directions are valid bit different
This table http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U2200.pdf
looks unpleasantly overfilled.  However good deal is stylistic differences
≥ vs ≧ and sometimes even indistinguishable ∈ vs ∊.

If we accept that python is more readable than Cobol, having a good
selection from the above makes for a programming language more readable in an
analogous manner.



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