[Python-ideas] Accepting "?" as a valid character for identifiers

Andre Roberge andre.roberge at gmail.com
Sun Oct 31 17:55:36 CET 2010


In some languages (e.g. Scheme, Ruby, etc.), the question mark character (?)
is a valid character for identifiers.  I find that using it well can improve
readability of programs written in those languages.

Python 3 now allow all kinds of unicode characters in source code for
identifiers. This is fantastic when one wants to teach programming to
non-English speakers and have them use meaningful identifiers.

While Python 3 does not allow ?, it does allow characters like ʔ  (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glottal_stop_%28letter%29)  which can be used
to good effect in writing valid identifiers such as functions that return
either True or False, etc., thus improving (imo) readability.

Given that one can legally mimic ? in Python identifiers, and given that the
? symbol is not used for anything in Python, would it be possible to
consider allowing the use of ? as a valid character in an identifier?

André
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