[Python-3000] Unicode identifiers (Was: sets in P3K?)

[Guido van Rossum]

On 4/29/06, "Martin v. Löwis" <martin at v.loewis.de> wrote:
> Python 2.3.5 (#2, Mar  6 2006, 10:12:24)
> [GCC 4.0.3 20060304 (prerelease) (Debian 4.0.2-10)] on linux2
> Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
> py> import locale
> py> locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL, "")
> 'de_DE at euro'
> py> löwis=1
> py> print löwis
> 1

But a file with "löwis=1" in it causes a syntax error (even if an
encoding is specified).

I believe this is a quirk of interactive mode only. Certainly the
language spec doesn't intend to allow this.

> > I do think that *eventually* we'll have to support this. But I don't
> > think Python needs to lead the pack here; I don't think the tools are
> > ready yet.
>
> Python doesn't really lead here. The C family of languages (C, C++,
> Java, C#) all have Unicode identifiers, so there is plenty of
> experience. Primarily, the experience is that the feature isn't
> used much, because of obstacles I think we can overcome (primarily,
> that all these languages make the source encoding
> implementation-defined; we don't, as we put the source encoding into
> the source file).

I still think it's premature. In any case, it doesn't strike me as
something that needs to be synchronized with Py3k -- it could be
introduced earlier or later since it introduces no backwards
compatibility. Python can respond much more agile here than most other
languages.

I can also see this as a Jython or IronPython "language extension" --
after all, if Java and C# support unicode identifiers e.g. for class
names, there will be a need to support importing those classes... That
way some experience can be gained.

--
--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)