[Python-ideas] Smart/Curly Quote Marks and cPython

[Ryan Birmingham]

Per the comments in this thread, I believe that a better error message for
this case would be a reasonable way to fix the use case around this issue.
It can be difficult to notice that your quotes are curved if you don't know
that's what you're looking for.

-Ryan Birmingham

On 22 October 2016 at 03:16, Steven D'Aprano <steve at pearwood.info> wrote:

> On Sat, Oct 22, 2016 at 06:13:35AM +0000, Jonathan Goble wrote:
> > Interesting idea. +1 from me; probably can be as simple as just having
> the
> > tokenizer interpret curly quotes as the ASCII (straight) version of
> itself
> > (in other words, " and the two curly versions of that would all produce
> the
> > same token, and same for single quotes, eliminating any need for
> additional
> > changes further down the chain).
>
> There's a lot more than two. At least nineteen (including the ASCII
> ones): 〝〞〟＂＇"'«»‘’‚‛“”„‟‹›
>
>
> > This would help with copying and pasting
> > code snippets from a source that may have auto-formatted the quotes
> without
> > the original author realizing it.
>
> Personally, I think that we should not encourage programmers to take a
> lazy, slap-dash attitude to coding. Precision is important to
> programmers, and there is no limit to how imprecise users can be. Should
> we also guard against people accidentally using prime marks or ornaments
> (dingbats):
>
> ′″‴‵‶‷ ❛❜❝❞❮❯
>
> as well? If not, what makes them different from other accidents of
> careless programmers?
>
> I don't think we should be trying to guess what programmers mean, nor do
> I think that we should be encouraging programmers to use word processors
> for coding. Use the right tool for the right job, and even Notepad is
> better for the occasional programmer than Microsoft Office or
> LibreOffice. Programming is hard, requiring precision and care, and we
> don't do beginners any favours by making it easy for them to be
> imprecise and careless.
>
> I would be happy to see improved error messages for smart quotes:
>
> py> s = ‘abcd’
>   File "<stdin>", line 1
>     s = ‘abcd’
>              ^
> SyntaxError: invalid character in identifier
>
> (especially in IDLE), but I'm very dubious about the idea of using
> typographical quote marks for strings. At the very least, Python should
> not lead the way here. Let some other language experiment with this
> first, and see what happens. Python is a mature, established language,
> not an experimental language.
>
> Of course, there's nothing wrong with doing an experimental branch of
> Python supporting this feature, to see what happens. But that doesn't
> mean we should impose it as an official language rule.
>
>
>
> --
> Steve
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