[Python-ideas] Verbatim names (allowing keywords as names)

[Stephan Houben]

Fortunately we have Unicode bold characters nowadays

𝐢𝐟 if 𝐢𝐧 in:
    𝐫𝐞𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐧 return

Look ma! No syntactic ambiguity!

Stephan

2018-05-17 19:10 GMT+02:00 Chris Barker via Python-ideas <
python-ideas at python.org>:

> On Wed, May 16, 2018 at 2:09 PM, Carl Smith <carl.input at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> If your position is that Guido shouldn't introduce keywords that are
>> currently used as names at all,
>>
>
> Exactly -- which is why I'm wondering my no one (that I've seen -- long
> thread)  is presenting the backwards option:
>
> Any new keywords introduced will be non-legal as regular names.
>
> \new_key_word
>
> for instance.
>
> Makes me think that it may have been good to have ALL keywords somehow
> non-legal as user-defined names -- maybe ugly syntax, but it would make a
> clear distinction.
>
> how ugly would this be?
>
> \for i in range(n):
>     \while \True:
>         ...
>
> pretty ugly :-(
>
> But maybe not so much if only a handful of new ones....
>
> Or is there another currently illegal character that could be used that
> would be less ugly?
>
> I'm actually confused as to what the point is to the \ prefix idea for
> names:
>
> * It would still require people to change their code when a new keyword
> was introduced
>
> * It would be no easier / harder than adding a conventional legal
> character -- trailing underscore, or ???
>
> * but now the changed code would no longer run on older versions of python.
>
> I guess it comes down to why you'd want to call out:
>
> "this is a name that is almost like a keyword"
>
> Seems like a meh, meh, lose proposal to me.
>
> OK, I see one advantage -- one could have code that already has BOTH word
> and word_ names in it. So when word becomes a keyword, a tool that
> automatically added an underscore would break the code. whereas if it
> automatically added an currently illegal character, it wouldn't shadow
> anything.
>
> But a sufficiently smart tool could get around that, too.
>
> -CHB
>
>
> --
>
> Christopher Barker, Ph.D.
> Oceanographer
>
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