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

Steve Howell showell30 at yahoo.com
Fri May 25 05:54:17 CEST 2007

--- Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:

If there's a security argument to be made for restricting the alphabet used by code contributions (even by co-workers at the same company), I don't see why ASCII-only projects should have it easier than projects in other cultures.

It doesn't look like any kind of global flag passed to the interpreter would scale -- once I am using a known trusted contribution that uses a different character set than mine, I would have to change the global setting to be more lenient, and the leniency would affect all code I'm using.

Ok, that argument sways me.

Can the debate about security be put to rest by adding something to the "Common Objections" section of the PEP, or has your pronouncement already put the debate to rest?

To the extent that recent objections don't fall under security, what are they?

Have these been adequately refuted?

  1. People want to be able to know what non-ascii code says.

  2. People don't want extra complexity in the language.

  3. People don't want Python's lexical syntax to be tied to a changing external standard.

My opinion:

#1 -- easy to refute

#2 -- too general to refute

#3 -- still an interesting point for debate

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