Python does not use U+2010 HYPHEN for the minus operator, it uses the U+002D (-) HYPHEN-MINUS.
In some monospace fonts, there is a subtle difference between U+002D, U+2013 EN DASH, and U+2014 EM DASH, but it's usually hard to tell them *all* apart. If you want to make a proposal, I'd suggest that you limit it to allowing the U+2010 HYPHEN to be used for names. U+002D simply cannot be changed because it would break billions of lines of code. On Sat, Nov 18, 2017 at 10:44 PM, Mikhail V <mikhail...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Sun, Nov 19, 2017 at 3:42 AM, Nick Coghlan <ncogh...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > For anyone tempted to suggest "What about multiple underscores > > indicating continuation of the variable name?", that's still a > > compatibility problem due to the unary minus operator: > > > > >>> my--variable > > 2 > > >>> my---variable > > 0 > > That seems to be another showcase of misfotune that Python > uses hyphen for minus operator. I know it is not language designer's > fault, because basic ASCII simply did not not include minus character. > But do you realise that the **current** problem you are adressing is that > font designers forgot to make the minus character (in monospaced font) > distinctive from the hyphen character? > > Well, what can I say, I just think it should be a reason to make a > collective complain to font providers, but not that you should silently > accept this and adopt the language design to someone's sloppy font design. > > As an aid for monospace die-hards, to minimise the confusion one could > publish a style-guide that recommends to disclose the minus operator > (currently > hyphen char) in spaces, like a - b, and probably disallow the new proposed > hyphen character in the beginning of the identifiers. > That would still leave potential for confusion because you cant' force > everyone > to follow style-guides, but one should struggle to break from this cycle > anyway. > > > > > Would hyphens in variable names improve readability sometimes? > > For reading code, indeed, always and very much. Of course not in case > I would be forced > to use monospaced font with a similar minus and hyphen. But > in that case I am already accepting the level of readability of > 12th century, so this would not make things much worse, and I > would simply put spaces around the minus operator and try to highlight > it with some strong color. > > > > Mikhail > _______________________________________________ > Python-ideas mailing list > Python-ideas@python.org > https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-ideas > Code of Conduct: http://python.org/psf/codeofconduct/ >
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