PEP 3131: Supporting Non-ASCII Identifiers

[Alex Martelli]

Aldo Cortesi <aldo at nullcube.com> wrote:

> Thus spake Steven D'Aprano (steven at REMOVE.THIS.cybersource.com.au):
> 
> > If you're relying on cursory visual inspection to recognize harmful code,
> > you're already vulnerable to trojans.
> 
> What a daft thing to say. How do YOU recognize harmful code in a patch
> submission? Perhaps you blindly apply patches, and then run your test suite on
> a quarantined system, with an instrumented operating system to allow you to
> trace process execution, and then perform a few weeks worth of analysis on the
> data?
> 
> Me, I try to understand a patch by reading it. Call me old-fashioned.

I concur, Aldo.  Indeed, if I _can't_ be sure I understand a patch, I
don't accept it -- I ask the submitter to make it clearer.

Homoglyphs would ensure I could _never_ be sure I understand a patch,
without at least running it through some transliteration tool.  I don't
think the world of open source needs this extra hurdle in its path.


Alex