From: murphy <murphy@...>
Date: 2007-09-27T06:17:29+09:00
Subject: Re: arbitrary Unicode characters in identifiers?

Wilson Bilkovich wrote:
> Oh man I hope this isn't a bug. That is really cool.
No, it's a feature. It works even with Ruby 1.8, and I guess it always
worked for Japanese ;)

I see two problems:
- Hard to input/edit: the lambda symbol isn't even on my keyboard!
- Portability: some editors/systems can't show weird characters.

In addition, the ASCII-only-rule convinced most people to code in
English, which is definitely a good thing.

But it's fun, and maybe it works for applications where portability
doesn't count. @David: I especially like your λ notation. More ideas
from a German blog entry I wrote about the topic:

# sum
def � enum
  enum.inject(0) { |sum, x| sum + yield(x) }
end

# sum of the first 10 square numbers
�(1..10) { |x| x**2 }  # => 385

# more math symbols
def ∞; 1.0 / 0.0; end
def π; Math::PI; end

-∞ .. 2*π  # => -Infinity..6.28318530717959

# Azumanga Daioh Insider
osaka = Object.new
def osaka.あ!
  sleep ∞
end