[julia-users] unicode character as type name leads to unexpected behavior

[Kevin Owens]

Maybe I just didn't read the documentation well enough, but when I try to 
use a unicode character as a name for a type it leads to unexpected 
behavior. I'm using Julia through Emacs and and ESS if that makes any 
difference.

Here's the output from versioninfo()

julia> versioninfo()
Julia Version 0.3.9
Commit 31efe69 (2015-05-30 11:24 UTC)
Platform Info:
  System: Linux (x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu)
  CPU: Intel(R) Atom(TM) CPU N570   @ 1.66GHz
  WORD_SIZE: 64
  BLAS: libopenblas (DYNAMIC_ARCH NO_AFFINITY Atom)
  LAPACK: libopenblas
  LIBM: libm
  LLVM: libLLVM-3.3

and starting with a clean session in the REPL I see this happening:

 
              _
   _       _ _(_)_     |  A fresh approach to technical computing
  (_)     | (_) (_)    |  Documentation: http://docs.julialang.org
   _ _   _| |_  __ _   |  Type "help()" for help.
  | | | | | | |/ _' |  |
  | | |_| | | | (_| |  |  Version 0.3.9 (2015-05-30 11:24 UTC)
 _/ |\__'_|_|_|\__'_|  |  
|__/                   |  x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu

WARNING: Terminal not fully functional
julia> 
julia> type delta
+    x
+    m
end

julia> type δ
+    x
+    m
end

julia> tmp1 = delta(.05,Inf)
delta(0.05,Inf)

julia> tmp2 = δ(.05,Inf)
(0.05,Inf)

julia> typeof(tmp1)
delta (constructor with 1 method)

julia> typeof(tmp2)
(Float64,Float64)

julia> abstract Something

julia> type α <: Something
+    x
+    m
end
ERROR: syntax: invalid type signature

I would have expected that using a unicode character would have the same 
behavior.

If I put an inner constructer method in the definition of δ I get an error

julia> type δ
+    x
+    m

+    δ(x,m) = new(x,m)
end
ERROR: new not defined

and as the error with α shows, you can't make it a subtype.