Re: RFE: Please allow unicode ID chars in identifiers

[tetsujin]

In that case, the answer is simple:

The shell swiftly rejects the script, and provides a clear reason why
it cannot be run. ("bash: Script requires the en_US.utf8 locale which
is not installed on this system. Sorry, dude.")

This, in my opinion, is certainly preferable over the current
situation, in which the script runs, and
- MAYBE fails at an UNKNOWN time with an unhelpful message like "bash:
$'351211204344272272': command not found"
- MAYBE fails in a more subtle, unforeseen way (i.e. word-splitting
the middle of a command name or identifier, then running the wrong
command with a garbage argument)

This is also why I think this should be an optional "encoding marker"
at a fairly fixed location in the file, rather than an option setting
that could occur anywhere in the script: It allows an incompatible
script to be immediately identified and rejected before it does
anything.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Greg Wooledge" <wooledg@eeg.ccf.org>
To:<tetsujin@scope-eye.net>
Cc:"bug-bash" <bug-bash@gnu.org>
Sent:Tue, 13 Jun 2017 17:00:10 -0400
Subject:Re: RFE: Please allow unicode ID chars in identifiers

 On Tue, Jun 13, 2017 at 04:44:08PM -0400, tetsujin@scope-eye.net
wrote:
 > For that to work, basically the character encoding used to
interpret
 > the script should be (potentially) distinct from the one used to
 > interact with the rest of the system.
 > 
 > ...But that gets complicated: the shell would need to interpret the
 > script in its locale of origin, but still respect the locale for
other
 > matters of I/O. [...]

 The main issue here is that the author's locale may not *exist* on
the
 user's machine. There may not be any way for bash to determine which
 non-ASCII characters constitute "letters" in the author's locale.