OpenEuphoria

Re: Accented characters in identifiers

• Posted by Robert Craig <rds at RapidEuphoria.com> Apr 08, 2007
• 867 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