Behavior of the for-else construct

[Peter J. Holzer]

On 2022-03-04 23:47:09 +0000, Avi Gross via Python-list wrote:
> I am not sure a reply is needed, Peter, and what you say is true. But
> as you point out, when using a German keyboard, I would  already have
> a way to enter symbols like ä, ö, ü and ß and no reason not to include
> them in variable names and so on if UNICODE is being used properly. I
> can use my last name in German notation as a variable in Python now:
> 
> Groß = 144
> Groß / 12
> 12.0

Yes, I'm using umlauts occasionally in variable names in Python, and
I've also used Greek characters and others.

But in Python I CAN use them. I DON'T HAVE to.

That's a big difference.

Characters like [] or {} are a part of Python's syntax. You can't avoid
using them. If you can't type them, you can't write Python. If it is
awkward to enter them (like having to type Alt-91 or pasting them from a
character table) it is painful to write programs.

German keyboards aquired an AltGr key and the ability to type these
characters in the mid to late 1980's. Presumably because those
characters were common in C and other programming languages and
programmers were complaining. I assume the same happened with keyboards
for other languages. These days you can assume that everybody can type
all ASCII characters (and knows how to do it).

But if you add arbitrary unicode characters to the syntax of your
language, for example using «» to delimit code blocks and ⦃ ⦄ for sets
and ∅ for None, then every programmer will have to figure out how to
enter those characters. And 90 % will probably say "Fuggedaboutit, I'm
not going to learn a new programming language I can't even type!"

        hp


-- 
   _  | Peter J. Holzer    | Story must make more sense than reality.
|_|_) |                    |
| |   | hjp at hjp.at         |    -- Charles Stross, "Creative writing
__/   | http://www.hjp.at/ |       challenge!"
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