Re: [Bug-apl] Feature suggestion: multiple function arguments

[Elias Mårtenson]

On 17 March 2016 at 22:46, Juergen Sauermann <address@hidden> wrote:

Hi Elias,

this is quite feasible technically. What I don't like, though is the incompatibility
that it creates for the source code.

Suppose I write a function Z←AؠB. Who else except myself can decipher
what it is supposed to mean? I strongly believe that restriction names
to almost only ASCII letters (and writing the names in English) is a very
good convention that we should not easily give up.

Well, you used an arabic letter in your example, which of course is quite indecipherable to me. If you had named the function KASHMIRI_YEH, it would be equally indecipherable.

However, allowing arbitrary Unicode would allow you to name a function ≈, for example. Another useful example would be a physics application using the symbol ℏ.

As you can see, only allowing english letters doesn't guarantee readability. And allowing Unicode doesn't imply hard-to-understand.

Anyone who cares about incompatibility simply wouldn't use these characters. You could even add a flag --disable-extensions to ensure this.

Regards,

Elias