On 15 October 2014 11:35, Steven G. Johnson <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Tuesday, October 14, 2014 9:36:58 PM UTC-4, Pontus Stenetorp wrote:
>>
>> julia> ∀foo = [17, 4711]
>> ERROR: syntax: invalid character "∀"
>
>
> Julia only allows a subset of unicode math characters (category Sm) in
> identifiers. ∀ hasn't been added to the whitelist yet.
>
> One reason why we have a whitelist is that we need to decide for each math
> symbol whether we want to parse it as part of an identifier or as an
> operator (and infix or prefix, and with what precedence). It wasn't
> completely clear to me whether we wanted ∀ to be an identifier or a prefix
> operator, so I punted on it when I last updated the identifier list.
Thank you Steven, I was not aware that we whitelisted mathematical
symbols, but rather only of the explicit introduction of operators in
`julia-parser.scm`. Reserving ∀ for now makes perfect sense, so
please do not count my initial e-mail as a vote in favour of turning
it into a valid identifier.
Pontus
