[Python-ideas] Ignorable whitespaces in the re.VERBOSE mode

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Serhiy Storchaka writes:

 > I agree. But if there is a special part of the Unicode standard for 
 > Pattern White Spaces which includes non-ASCII characters, perhaps there 
 > is a need in them. I asked for the case if Python developers with very 
 > different cultures have need in additional whitespaces in regular 
 > expressions, but I don't know. Seems nobody has claimed their need.

I doubt that Japanese would want it.  I do use \N{IDEOGRAPHIC SPACE} a
bit as a *target* of regular expressions, but I would never want it as
non-syntactic in re.VERBOSE.  (Of course, I'm not a native Japanese, but
I have never heard a Japanese developer wish for use of that character
in any programming language, outside of literal strings.)

 > In particularly I don't know how helpful would be supporting 
 > right-to-left and left-to-right marks in verbose regular expressions

That's a good question.  Interpretation and display of R2L in
programming constructs came up briefly in the discussions about BIDI
on the emacs-devel list.  I'll ask Eli Zaretskii, who implemented it
for Emacs.

Steve


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