[Python-3000] PEP: Supporting Non-ASCII Identifiers

[Baptiste Carvello]

Martin v. Löwis a écrit :
>> If this is to ever happen, it should be only accessible through a command-line
>> option to python. That way we make sure people are aware that they are making
>> their code incompatible with the larger world.
> 
> In what way will the source code be incompatible with the larger world?
> 
> Martin
> 
> !DSPAM:463be8e2237561355422449!
> 

I mean incompatible from a maintenance point of view.

Imagine your employer buys some chinese company (or some chinese company decides
to open source its software), and you end up maintaining code where identifiers
are each one chinese character... Maybe this can be solved easily with a proper
IDE, though.

As a user of open source software, I would also hate to open the source file in
search for a bug, only to find out I can't even recognise the identifiers from
one another. I'm sure big projects will have guidelines, but in my field
(physics), a lot of code is written by people with little programming background.

For this reason, I think using this feature should be a conscious decision at
the project level, and not just one developper finding out the "cool new
feature" and starting to use it in his code without much thinking about the
consequences.

Cheers,
Baptiste

P.S.: I do believe this feature is nice in some cases, for example when teaching
programming to children.