Using non-ascii symbols

[Christoph Zwerschke]

Dave Hansen wrote:
>> Once you open your mind for using non-ascii symbols, I'm sure one can 
>> find a bunch of useful applications. Variable names could be allowed to 
>> be non-ascii, as in XML. Think class names in Arabian... Or you could 
>> use Greek letters if you run out of one-letter variable names, just as 
>> Mathematicians do. Would this be desirable or rather a horror scenario? 
> 
> The latter, IMHO.  Especially variable names.  Consider i vs. ì vs. í
> vs. î vs. ï vs. ...

There could be conventions discouraging you to use ambiguous symbols. 
Even today, you wouldn't use a lowercase "l" or an "O" because it can be 
confused with a digit 1 or 0. But you're right this problem would become 
much greater with unicode chars. This kind of pitfall has already been 
overlooked with the introduction of international domain names which are 
  exploitable for phishing attacks...

-- Christoph