On 6/10/07, "Martin v. Löwis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Still, what is the risk being estimated? Is it that somebody > maliciously tries to provide patches that use look-alike > characters? I honestly don't know what risks you see.
Here are the top three that I see; note that none of these concerns say "Don't use non-ASCII ids". They do all say "Don't use ids from a script the user hasn't said to expect". (1) Malicious user is indeed one risk. A small probability, but a big enough loss that I want a warning when the door is unlocked. (2) Typos is another risk. Even in mono-lingual environments, it is possible to get a wrong letter. If you're expecting ì, it is fine. If you're not, then it shouldn't pass silently. (3) "Reados". When doing maintenance later, if I wasn't expecting ì, I may see it as a regular i, and code that way. Now I have two doppelganger/döppelganger variables (or inherited methods) serving the same purpose, but using different memory locations. Ideally, the test cases will catch this. In real life, even the python stdlib has plenty of modules with poor test coverage. I can't expect better of random code, particularly given that it has chosen to ignore the style-guide (and history) about sticking to ASCII for distributed code. (Learning to store your tests generally comes long after picking up the basic style guidelines.) -jJ _______________________________________________ Python-3000 mailing list Python-3000@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-3000 Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-3000/archive%40mail-archive.com
