[Python-3000] Support for PEP 3131 (original) (raw)

Jim Jewett jimjjewett at gmail.com
Thu May 17 02:19:21 CEST 2007

On 5/13/07, Jason Orendorff <jason.orendorff at gmail.com> wrote:

I think the gesture alone is worth it, even if no one ever used the feature productively. But people will. The cost to python-dev is low, and the cost to English-speaking users is very likely zero.

What am I missing?

Additional costs:

(1) Security concerns.

Offhand, I'm not sure how to exploit it, but I could imagine scenarios, such as

if var<limit:

where "var<limit" turned out to be an identifier (using a character that looked like "<") rather than a comparison.

(2) Obscure bugs.

I have seen code that did the wrong thing because a method override (or global variable name) was misspelled. You can argue that it was sloppy code, but that sort of thing would be more common when the programmer couldn't tell the difference visually. (Just as today's typos are more likely to involve "0" and "O" than "T" and "5")

Guillaume has pointed out that people whose native language isn't written in Latin characters already have this problem, but it is a problem they already learn to deal with as part of learning to program.

-jJ

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