P*rl in Latin, whither Python?

[Michael Hudson]

kc5tja at garnet.armored.net (Samuel A. Falvo II) writes:

> On Sat, 11 Nov 2000 14:50:15 -0800, Erik Max Francis wrote:
> >> nice to be able to define variables like-this, or like-this? or
> >> *like-this*.
> >
> >Huh?
> 
> Consider the following:
> 
> >>> x = 0
> >>> X-is-zero? = ( x == 0 )
> >>> if X-is-zero? :
> ...   print "Yup, X is zero."
> ...
> Yup, X is zero.
> >>> _
> 
> Languages such as Forth and Lisp allow virtually *any* valid typable
> character in a symbol name, specifically because of their extremely low
> syntactical overhead.  

It's not all that hard to bodge Python so that you can have tokens
with -, +, $ and so on in - I did it once, but seem to have lost the
patch.  I could probably do it again if anyone was interested...

> Whether this makes such languages superior or inferior is not in
> question, and I reserve my judgement for another day.

So do I.

Cheers,
M.

-- 
  I have gathered a posie of other men's flowers, and nothing but the
  thread that binds them is my own.                       -- Montaigne