[Python-ideas] allow `lambda' to be spelled λ

[Rustom Mody]

On Tuesday, July 19, 2016 at 10:20:29 AM UTC+5:30, Nick Coghlan wrote:
>
> On 18 July 2016 at 13:41, Rustom Mody <rusto... at gmail.com <javascript:>> 
> wrote:
> > Do consider:
> >
> >>>> Α = 1
> >>>> A = 2
> >>>> Α + 1 == A
> > True
> >>>>
> >
> > Can (IMHO) go all the way to
> > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IDN_homograph_attack
>
> Yes, we know - that dramatic increase in the attack surface is why
> PyPI is still ASCII only, even though full Unicode support is
> theoretically possible.
>
> It's not a major concern once an attacker already has you running
> arbitrary code on your system though, as the main problem there is
> that they're *running arbitrary code on your system*. , That means the
> usability gains easily outweigh the increased obfuscation potential,
> as worrying about confusable attacks at that point is like worrying
> about a dripping tap upstairs when the Brisbane River is already
> flowing through the ground floor of your house :)
>
> Cheers,
>
>
There was this question on the python list a few days ago:
Subject: SyntaxError: Non-ASCII character

Chris Angelico pointed out the offending line:
wf = wave.open(“test.wav”, “rb”)
(should be wf = wave.open("test.wav", "rb") instead)

Since he also said:
> The solution may be as simple as running "python3 script.py" rather than 
"python script.py".

I pointed out that the python2 error was more helpful (to my eyes) than 
python3s


Python3 

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/home/ariston/foo.py", line 31
    wf = wave.open(“test.wav”, “rb”)
                       ^
SyntaxError: invalid character in identifier

Python2


Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "foo.py", line 31
SyntaxError: Non-ASCII character '\xe2' in file foo.py on line 31, but no 
encoding declared; see http://python.org/dev/peps/pep-0263/ for details 

IOW
1. The lexer is internally (evidently from the error message) so 
ASCII-oriented that any “unicode-junk” just defaults out to identifiers 
(presumably comments are dealt with earlier) and then if that lexing action 
fails it mistakenly pinpoints a wrong *identifier* rather than just an 
impermissible character like python 2
combine that with
2. matrix mult (@) Ok to emulate perl but not to go outside ASCII

makes it seem  (to me) python's unicode support is somewhat wrongheaded.

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