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Proposal: allow '?' and '!' in identifiers

Grant Edwards grante at visi.com
Tue Feb 20 13:10:37 EST 2001 
In article <96sp4s$ni7$1 at news.mathworks.com>, Joshua Marshall wrote:
>David Allen <s2mdalle at titan.vcu.edu> wrote:
>...
>
>>> If the addition of '!' as a valid identifier character causes too many
>>> waves, it would still be nice to see '?'.
>
>> Why?  How would this make the language more expressive?
>> How would it make your programming tasks easier?
>
>> Is introducing new and strange behavior (such as your
>> a!=b example) worth it?  Why?
>
>Introducing some strange behavior with '!' may very well not be worth
>it.  However, while adding '?' as a legal identifier character does
>not make the Python more expressive, it can make Python programs more
>self-documenting.  The convention of ending predicate function names
>with '?' is useful, in my opinion.

Definitely.  I always found that convention in Scheme to be
very expresive and compact.  The convention of ending
predicates with "!" when they modified internal state was also
useful though perhaps not as intuitive as "?".

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  Now I am depressed...
                                  at               
                               visi.com
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