Re: Internationalisation in programming languages [Was Re: lex patch]

[Edgar Toernig <froese@...>]

RLake@oxfam.org.uk wrote:
> 
> > I want to see you when you get the first file from a system
> > that uses smileys, playing card symbols, or an em-dash within
> > identifiers *g*.
> 
>[...] I personally might want to use a smiley or a frowny:
> 
>    while :-)
>
> If I were writing a bridge program, why shouldn't I use playing card
> symbols for certain variables?

Well, these symbols are in the 0x00-0x1f range on MSDOS. ;-)

> > IMHO, a programming language should use a well defined and system
> > independent character set.  The characters which may be used in Lua
> > identifiers is undefined and system dependent.  Bad.
> 
> I agree 100%. The question is simply what the set should be. My argument is
> that making the set bigger doesn't hurt anything.

I think that anything outside the 7-bit ASCII range is pretty system
dependent (until UNICODE is established).  And there's not much left in
the ASCII range that would make the set bigger.  Wouldn't it be better
to reserve all the high-bit chars for UNICODE?  That way you can later
build a UTF-8 aware Lua that would still have no problems with older
scripts.

Ciao, ET.