On Mon, Oct 31, 2016 at 12:39 AM, Paul Moore <p.f.mo...@gmail.com> wrote: > It's certainly not difficult, in principle. I have (had, I lost it in > an upgrade recently...) a little AutoHotkey program that interpreted > Vim-style digraphs in any application that needed them. But my point > was that we don't want to require people to write such custom > utilities, just to be able to write Python code. Or is the feeling > that it's acceptable to require that?
There's a chicken-and-egg problem. So long as most people don't have tools like that, a language that requires them is going to be very annoying - but so long as no major language uses such characters, there's no reason for developers to set up those kinds of tools. Possibly the best way is a gentle introduction of alternative syntaxes. Since Python currently has no "empty set display" syntax, that seems like a perfect starting point. You can always type "set()", but that involves an actual function call; using ∅ gives a small performance boost, eliminates the risk of shadowing, etc, etc. All minor points, but could be convenient enough. Also, if repr(set()) returns "∅", it'll be easy for anyone to get hold of the character for copy/paste. As of 2016, I think it's not acceptable to *require* this, but it may be time to start making use of it, retaining ASCII-only digraphs and trigraphs, the way C has alternative spelling for braces and so on. Then time passes, most people will be comfortable using the characters themselves, and the digraphs/trigraphs can be deprecated, with new syntax not being given any. Pipe dream? ChrisA _______________________________________________ Python-ideas mailing list Python-ideas@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-ideas Code of Conduct: http://python.org/psf/codeofconduct/
