PEP 3131: Supporting Non-ASCII Identifiers

[Terry Reedy]

"Aldo Cortesi" <aldo at nullcube.com> wrote in message 
news:20070516044923.GA29008 at nullcube.com...
| I must admit to a fascination with language myself - I even have a degree 
in
| English literature to prove it! To be fair to Steven, I've asked some of 
my
| colleagues here in Sydney about their reactions to the phrase "by eye", 
and
| none of them have yet come up with anything that has the strong 
pejorative
| taint Steven gave it. At any rate, it's clear that the phrase is not well
| defined anywhere (not even in the OED), and I'm sure there are 
substantial
| regional variations in interpretation.

As a native American, yes, 'by eye' is sometimes, maybe even often used 
with a perjorative intent.

| In cases like these, however, context is paramount, so I will quote 
sentences
| that started this petty bickering:

However, in this context
|
| > The security implications have not been sufficiently explored. I don't 
want
| > to be in a situation where I need to mechanically "clean" code (say, 
from a
| > submitted patch) with a tool because I can't reliably verify it by eye.

I read it just as Aldo claims .

| Surely, in context, the meaning is clear? "By eye" here means nothing 
more nor
| less than a literal reading suggests. Taking these sentences to be an 
argument
| for a slip-shod, careless approach to code, as Steven did, is surely 
perverse.

Perhaps because in this context, it is not at all clear what the 'more 
exact' method would be.

Terry Jan Reedy