Timeline for Is it bad to use Unicode characters in variable names? [closed]
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
46 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aug 12 at 18:06 | history | edited | Thomas Owens♦ | CC BY-SA 4.0 | Replacing goo.gl link |
| Apr 10, 2023 at 22:13 | comment | added | gnasher729 | In languages other than English there may be many identifiers not covered by ascii, so unicode will come handy there. For example RGB = Rot, Grün, Blau. | |
| Jul 15, 2020 at 6:17 | comment | added | Steve3p0 | As someone who is having to code up some maths now, I love it! | |
| Jul 1, 2020 at 18:53 | comment | added | Felipe G. Nievinski | uber cool, it's only a matter of time until it catches on: rosettacode.org/wiki/Unicode_variable_names | |
| Jun 16, 2020 at 10:01 | history | edited | CommunityBot | Commonmark migration | |
| Aug 15, 2018 at 14:24 | comment | added | endolith | I'm internally debating whether to name a function _sRGB1_to_Jʹaʹbʹ (vs something like _sRGB1_to_J_a_b_ or _sRGB1_to_Jpapbp)... | |
| Aug 10, 2016 at 7:01 | comment | added | badp | @gerrit that's an argument to have ² be an built-in, then, rather than a thing you can't have (nevermind that ** can be overridden) | |
| Aug 8, 2016 at 19:55 | comment | added | gerrit | Python is right to not permit ² in any variable name. When I see x² I think x**2. Anything else would be mightily confusing. | |
| Aug 21, 2015 at 13:19 | history | closed | CommunityBot Ixrec Bart van Ingen Schenau gnat | Opinion-based | |
| Aug 15, 2015 at 19:47 | review | Close votes | |||
| Aug 21, 2015 at 13:20 | |||||
| Aug 15, 2015 at 19:18 | history | protected | gnat | ||
| Jul 26, 2015 at 23:00 | review | Close votes | |||
| Jul 27, 2015 at 12:59 | |||||
| Sep 14, 2014 at 4:16 | answer | added | Bérenger | timeline score: 3 | |
| Aug 7, 2014 at 17:02 | comment | added | user40980 | OutputStream.🚽; | |
| Jun 15, 2014 at 3:35 | answer | added | rich remer | timeline score: -2 | |
| Oct 21, 2013 at 2:58 | comment | added | ShreevatsaR | Just for the record, I'd like it to be clear that the first code sample (with non-ASCII characters) is perfectly valid Python3 code. Python 3 does support σ and μ and γ and many other characters in variable names, but it doesn't support √. I think the list of allowed identifier characters is described by this and is this. | |
| May 1, 2011 at 11:59 | answer | added | roberto | timeline score: 1 | |
| Nov 2, 2010 at 10:23 | vote | accept | badp | ||
| Nov 1, 2010 at 21:34 | comment | added | badp | @David, there's no such distinction in Python. Indeed, sqrt = lambda x: x**.5 gets me a function (more precisely, a callable): sqrt(2) => 1.41421356237. | |
| Nov 1, 2010 at 21:31 | comment | added | David Thornley | I find it a very good thing that Python doesn't accept arithmetic operations as variables. A square root sign should denote the operation of taking a square root, and should not be a variable. | |
| Nov 1, 2010 at 18:05 | answer | added | GrandmasterB | timeline score: 0 | |
| Nov 1, 2010 at 17:58 | answer | added | gbn | timeline score: 4 | |
| Nov 1, 2010 at 17:16 | comment | added | Bjarke Freund-Hansen | @DominicMcDonnell - It is not unreadable or unspeakable at all, read the math out loud and then the code. It actually reads out mostly the same. | |
| Nov 1, 2010 at 16:53 | answer | added | Konrad Rudolph | timeline score: 61 | |
| Nov 1, 2010 at 15:47 | comment | added | Paul Nathan | The ASCII version is far more readable. | |
| Nov 1, 2010 at 15:16 | comment | added | CodexArcanum | @badp I mentioned this in my answer, but it was a bit off topic so I'll reiterate it here: you should check out Haskell. It allows you to define your own operators and use basically any symbol for a function name and it has a REPL so you can program interactively like in Python. Although functional programming requires a shift in mindset, I think you'd find it very accommodating to math problems like the one you posted. | |
| Nov 1, 2010 at 14:50 | answer | added | Lie Ryan | timeline score: 35 | |
| Nov 1, 2010 at 14:45 | history | edited | Victor Hurdugaci | edited tags | |
| Nov 1, 2010 at 14:32 | answer | added | tcrosley | timeline score: 2 | |
| Nov 1, 2010 at 13:55 | answer | added | dsimcha | timeline score: 6 | |
| Nov 1, 2010 at 13:26 | comment | added | Peter Boughton | Good question, but bad title - I've edited it to something more useful/descriptive, but if anyone thinks it could be improved further... | |
| Nov 1, 2010 at 13:23 | history | edited | Peter Boughton | CC BY-SA 2.5 | edited title |
| Nov 1, 2010 at 13:18 | answer | added | back2dos | timeline score: -2 | |
| Nov 1, 2010 at 12:16 | answer | added | zvrba | timeline score: 10 | |
| Nov 1, 2010 at 12:09 | comment | added | Vetle | Reminds me of an article by Poul-Henning Kamp titled "To move forward with programming languages we need to break free from the tyranny of ASCII.", where he discusses ASCII vs. Unicode in programming languages. | |
| Nov 1, 2010 at 12:09 | comment | added | C. Ross | If the lines with μ are valid, then the problem isn't unicode in your code, the problem is that you're using a math symbol (which happens to be from unicode) as a variable name. | |
| Nov 1, 2010 at 12:02 | answer | added | Stephen C | timeline score: 2 | |
| Nov 1, 2010 at 11:34 | answer | added | LennyProgrammers | timeline score: 3 | |
| Nov 1, 2010 at 11:23 | history | edited | badp | CC BY-SA 2.5 | added 416 characters in body; added 4 characters in body |
| Nov 1, 2010 at 11:21 | answer | added | TheLQ | timeline score: 36 | |
| Nov 1, 2010 at 11:19 | answer | added | user4051 | timeline score: 14 | |
| Nov 1, 2010 at 11:08 | comment | added | badp | @Sandy Yeah, I ? Unicode. | |
| Nov 1, 2010 at 11:03 | comment | added | Sandeep Kumar M | Talking about unicode... codinghorror.com/blog/2008/03/i-entity-unicode.html | |
| Nov 1, 2010 at 10:56 | comment | added | badp | @Dominic You should have seen the paper. It's just eight pages... | |
| Nov 1, 2010 at 10:54 | comment | added | Dominique McDonnell | That's insane, completely unreadable and unspeakably cool. | |
| Nov 1, 2010 at 10:51 | history | asked | badp | CC BY-SA 2.5 |