Re: RFE: Please allow unicode ID chars in identifiers

[Chet Ramey]

On 6/13/17 2:30 PM, L A Walsh wrote:
> 
> 
> Chet Ramey wrote:
>> On 6/1/17 8:42 PM, L A Walsh wrote:
>>  
>>> It would be a useful upgrade besides being a "good world citizen" ;-).
>>>     
>>
>> The only way this makes sense is to extend the allowable set of
>> characters from the portable character set to the current locale.
>>
>>  
>>> I'm guessing that if POSIX was set, then they'd be limited
>>> to the ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange)
>>> set.  ;^)
>>>     
>>
>> Not quite; it's a subset of characters from the Portable Character Set.
>> That's the set of characters that Posix requires to be present in all
>> locales supported by Posix systems.
>>
>> http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/basedefs/V1_chap03.html#tag_03_235
>>
>>   
> Aren't all of those characters in ASCII?  I.e. wouldn't
> ASCII be a limiting set?  It may not be the minimal set, since
> many characters in ASCII aren't usable in varnames, but I
> thought the allowed chars in vars were some set <= ASCII?

This is correct.  The portable character set is a subset of ASCII.

> 
> It seems like it would be a greater support burden to
> allow one set for functions while restricting the allowed
> characters for variables to some smaller set, no?

No, of course not.  The code has to exist, and it exists, to support Posix
standard identifiers. It's a greater support burden to add locale-specific
code to what already is there.

-- 
``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer
                 ``Ars longa, vita brevis'' - Hippocrates
Chet Ramey, UTech, CWRU    chet@case.edu    http://cnswww.cns.cwru.edu/~chet/