Re: Accented characters in identifiers
- Posted by Robert Craig <rds at RapidEuphoria.com> Apr 08, 2007
- 705 views
Juergen Luethje wrote: > 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: > <<a > href="http://www.listfilter.com/cgi-bin/esearch.exu?fromMonth=2&fromYear=7&toMonth=2&toYear=7&postedBy=rds&keywords=declaration+initialize">http://www.listfilter.com/cgi-bin/esearch.exu?fromMonth=2&fromYear=7&toMonth=2&toYear=7&postedBy=rds&keywords=declaration+initialize</a>> > > 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. OK, thanks for that insight. I guess I'll hold off, for at least several days, until we hear from some other non-English programmers. It just seemed to me that if I had to do without some of the English alphabet in my identifiers, it would be annoying to me, so I figured it must be annoying to non-English programmers. Also, if someone creates identifiers that are not English-related, I wouldn't understand them anyway, regardless of whether they contain accents or funny-looking characters. I guess it could be a problem though if some characters resemble punctuation and other confusing shapes, like some of the English ASCII 128-255 characters do on my English region computer. Regards, Rob Craig Rapid Deployment Software http://www.RapidEuphoria.com