I thought the most mode sane and modern language use the unicode block identification to determine something can be used in valid identifier or not. Like all the ‘numeric’ unicode characters can’t be at the beginning of identifier similar to how it can’t have ‘3var’.
So once your programming language supports unicode, it automatically will support any unicode language that has those particular blocks.
Sanity is subjective here. There are reasons to disallow non-ASCII characters, for example to prevent identical-looking characters from causing sneaky bugs in the code, like this but unintentional: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IDN_homograph_attack (and yes, don’t you worry, this absolutely can happen unintentionally).
OCaml’s old m17n compiler plugin solved this by requiring you pick one block per ‘word’ & you can only switch to another block if separated by an underscore. As such you can do print_แมว but you couldn’t do pℝint_c∀t. This is a totally reasonable solution.
I think they exclude some unicode characters from being use in identifiers. At least last I tried it wouldn’t allow me to use an emoji as a variable name.
Isn’t it all unicode at the end of the day, so it supports anything unicode supports? Or am I off base?
Ssh! 🫢 You’ll ruin the joke!
Okay but how does starting a secure shell help?
Yes, but the language/compiler defines which characters are allowed in variable names.
I thought the most mode sane and modern language use the unicode block identification to determine something can be used in valid identifier or not. Like all the ‘numeric’ unicode characters can’t be at the beginning of identifier similar to how it can’t have ‘3var’.
So once your programming language supports unicode, it automatically will support any unicode language that has those particular blocks.
Sanity is subjective here. There are reasons to disallow non-ASCII characters, for example to prevent identical-looking characters from causing sneaky bugs in the code, like this but unintentional: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IDN_homograph_attack (and yes, don’t you worry, this absolutely can happen unintentionally).
OCaml’s old m17n compiler plugin solved this by requiring you pick one block per ‘word’ & you can only switch to another block if separated by an underscore. As such you can do
print_แมวbut you couldn’t dopℝint_c∀t. This is a totally reasonable solution.I think they exclude some unicode characters from being use in identifiers. At least last I tried it wouldn’t allow me to use an emoji as a variable name.