OpenEuphoria

Re: Accented characters in identifiers

• Posted by Juergen Luethje <j.lue at gmx.de> Apr 06, 2007
• 755 views

Robert Craig wrote:

> CChris wrote:
>> Currently, Eu interprets characters with the most significant bit set as
>> opcodes. Only old shrouded files store Eu opcodes this way.
>> 
>> Isn't it time to remove that restriction, so as to be able to use non 
>> english identifiers in programs? Other languages frequently use accented
>> characters.
> 
> Yes, I agree. I'll do that fairly soon, if nobody objects.
> Others, such as Igor Kachan, have also mentioned the lack of support
> for the higher ASCII codes for non-English languages.

<snip>

Sorry, I don't think that this is a good idea, because:

a) The usage of this feature will bring a considerable disadvantage.
   When someone creates identifiers that contain special characters of
   her/his language, it is likely that other people somewhwre else in
   the world will have problems to read that code.
   You recently reminded us of a post from you on 12 Feb 2002:
<http://www.listfilter.com/cgi-bin/esearch.exu?fromMonth=2&fromYear=7&toMonth=2&toYear=7&postedBy=rds&keywords=declaration+initialize>

   In this message it reads:
   | I like it better the way it is. You could argue that I don't have to
   | use variable inits if I don't want to. You could argue that I don't
   | have to use goto if I don't want to. A language does not exist just
   | to serve the isolated programmer. It exists to serve a community
   | of programmers. In situations where it really doesn't matter 
   | how something is written, I think there are advantages to 
   | reducing the number of choices.

   IMHO the same is true concerning special characters in identifiers,
   especially since many of them are not equal in different languages.
   The Euphoria community is small enough, Euphoria shouldn't encourage
   people to write code that can only be read by a fraction of this
   small community.

b) It is not necessary at all. We currently have a sufficient number of
   characters for creating identifiers. The German language also has
   some special characters, but I _never_ had the need to use one of
   them in an identifier.

Regards,
   Juergen