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

Stephen J. Turnbull stephen at xemacs.org
Sun May 27 14:59:08 CEST 2007

James Y Knight writes:

If the identifier syntax is changed to include unicode, all python
modules are still usable everywhere. Once you start going down the
road of configurable syntax (worse: globally configurable syntax),

The syntax is not "configured", it is "audited". Just like Unix passwords, which can be anything in principle, but most distros audit them (unless assigned by root).

Now, Ka-Ping Yee and Josiah Carlson clearly would like to see the restriction in the language. That's not where I'm going. I see PEP 3131 as defining the language.

However, I do think that a limited amount of optional auditing in the Python compiler would be a good idea to have, especially for Americans who (along with everybody else) have no need for Unicode identifier support now, and are not going to have a need for a long time on average. Better they should get a heads-up when the Klingons arrive.

there will be a "second class" of python modules that won't work on
some systems without extra pain.

That's right. It's all modules that contain non-ASCII identifiers, because by PEP 3131 they cannot be distributed with Python as part of the standard library.

The question is how much extra pain, and will it actually hinder u

It started with a simple "-U", grew into a "-U ", grew into

Actually, it started with plugging into the codec interface, with "ASCII-only" and "PEP 3131" auditors available by default.

a 'pyidchar.txt' file with a list of character ranges, and now that
pyidchar.txt file is going to have separate sections based on module
name? Sorry, but are you !@# kidding me?!?

The scalability issue was raised by Guido, not the ASCII advocates.

To answer how I view this, no, I'm not kidding. Until the vaporware auditing programs get fieldtested, and we've actually seen a couple of exploits of unwary sites and discover that they're the ones the auditing programs already catch, not something unexpected.

In any case, I expect that the most commonly used version of that file will look like

[DEFAULT]
000000-1FFFFF    # all of Unicode as restricted by PEP 3131

# pyidchar.txt ends here

Anything more complicated than that is a convenient standardized format for filters that can be shared among the seriously paranoid.

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