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

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Fri, May 18, 2018 at 03:09:57PM +0200, Stephan Houben wrote:
> 2018-05-18 13:37 GMT+02:00 Steven D'Aprano <steve at pearwood.info>:
> 
> > On Fri, May 18, 2018 at 11:17:13AM +0200, Stephan Houben wrote:
> >
> > > And the alternative is to replace all occurrences of
> > > spam with 𝐬𝐩𝐚𝐦 , which has the same effect and also is
> > > backward-compatible with 3.x for x < 8.
> > >
> > > So there is already a kind of solution available, albeit an ugly one.
> >
> > You are kidding, I hope.
> >
> 
> 
> I am not kidding;

Earlier you described this suggestion as "a silly joke".

https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-ideas/2018-May/050861.html

I think you were right then.


> I am merely defending the status quo.
> I demonstrate how the intended behavior can be achieved using features
> available in current Python versions.

Aside from the fact that font, editor and keyboard support for such 
non-BMP Unicode characters is very spotty, it isn't the intended 
behaviour.

As you point out, the intended behaviour is that obj.𝐢𝐟 and 
obj.if ought to be identical. Since the later is a syntax error, so 
should be the former.


> It is guaranteed to work by PEP-3131:
> https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-3131
> 
> "All identifiers are converted into the normal form NFKC while parsing;
> comparison of identifiers is based on NFKC."
> 
> NFKC normalization means spam must be considered the same identifier as
> 𝐬𝐩𝐚𝐦 .


It's not the NFKC normalization that I'm questioning. Its the fact that 
it is done too late to catch the use of a keyword.


-- 
Steve