[Python-Dev] Python and the Unicode Character Database

[M.-A. Lemburg]

Alexander Belopolsky wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 29, 2010 at 2:22 AM, "Martin v. Löwis" <martin at v.loewis.de> wrote:
>>> The former ensures that literals in code are always readable; the later
>>> allows users to enter numbers in their own number system. How could that
>>> be a bad thing?
>>
>> It's YAGNI, feature bloat. It gives the illusion of supporting something
>> that actually isn't supported very well (namely, parsing local number
>> strings). I claim that there is no meaningful application
>> of this feature.

This is not about parsing local number strings, it's about
parsing number strings represented using different scripts -
besides en-US is a locale as well, ye know :-)

> Speaking of YAGNI, does anyone want to defend
> 
>>>> complex('١٢٣٤.٥٦j')
> 1234.56j
> 
> ?

Yes. The same arguments apply.

Just because ASCII-proponents may have a hard time reading such
literals, doesn't mean that script users have the same trouble.

> Especially given that we reject complex('1234.56i'):
> 
> http://bugs.python.org/issue10562

We've had that discussion long before we had Unicode in Python.
The main reason was that 'i' looked to similar to 1 in a number
of fonts which is why it was rejected for Python source code.

However, I don't any reason why we shouldn't accept both i and
j for complex(), though, since the input to that constructor
doesn't have to originate in Python source code.

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
eGenix.com

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