[Python-Dev] Divorcing str and unicode (no more implicitconversions).

Antoine Pitrou solipsis at pitrou.net
Sat Oct 29 14:32:22 CEST 2005


> Thanks for these data. This mostly reflects my experience with German
> and French users: some people would like to use non-ASCII identifiers
> if they could, other argue they never would as a matter of principle.
> Of course, transliteration is more straight-forward.

FWIW, being French, I don't remember hearing any programmer wish (s)he
could use non-ASCII identifiers, in any programming language. But
arguably translitteration is very straight-forward (although a bit
lossless at times ;-)).

I think typeability and reproduceability should be weighted carefully.
It's nice to have the real letter delta instead of "delta", but how do I
type it again on my non-Greek keyboard if I want to keep consistent
naming in the program?

ASCII is ethnocentric, but it probably can be typed easily with every
device in the world.

Also, as a matter of fact, if I type an identifier with an accented
letter inside, I would like Python to warn me, because it would be a
typing error on my part.

Maybe this should be an option at the beginning of any source file (like
encoding currently). Or is this overkill?




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