RE: Apostrophes, quotation marks, keyboards and typography

From: Murray Sargent (murrays@microsoft.com)
Date: Mon Jul 19 1999 - 21:20:29 EDT


Markus noted:

> > ... ASCII for
> > identifiers is just fine, and if it forces software engineers to stay
> > with English identifiers, then trust me, this is a feature, not a bug.
>
An example where nonASCII identifiers is really useful is in coding up
mathematical formulae that contain Greek letters. For example, a program is
much more readable if you use U+3B1 for alpha rather than spelling out the
name alpha. Similarly U+3C0 for pi. Hopefully C++ will follow Java's
excellent example and allow Unicode alphabetics in variable names.

One particularly intriguing possibility is the use of Chinese characters.
Imagine the expressive power of relatively short program statements if you
could use such succinct representations of ideas. Of course, you need to
read Chinese...!

Murray



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