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<p>I don't concur with the motion but here you are, with compliments:</p>
<p>("Send your EEP submission to the EEP editors <a href="mailto:eeps@erlang.org">eeps@erlang.org</a>").</p>
<pre><code>Author: Richard O'Keefe <ok(at)cs(dot)otago(dot)ac(dot)nz>
Status: Draft
Type: Standards Track
Created: 19-Oct-2012
Erlang-Version: R16B
Post-History: 19-Oct-2012
Replaces:
</code></pre>
<hr/>
<h2>EEP XXX: Unicode Variable And Atom Names</h2>
<h1>Abstract</h1>
<p>Variable and atom names should be allowed to use any Unicode characters
instead of only Latin-1 characters.</p>
<h2>Forces</h2>
<ol>
<li><p>Support for Unicode continues to increase, with
minimal source code support about to arrive. </p></li>
<li><p>Unicode variable names and unquoted atoms are not
here yet, so now is the time to settle on a design. </p></li>
<li><p>They will need to come. There may be legal or
institutional reasons why unicode-capable languages
are required. Some people just want to use their
own language and script. Erlang's strength in
network applications means that being able to
represent Internationalized Domain Names as unquoted
atoms would be just as much of a convenience as
being able to represent ASCII domain names like
www.example.com (which needs no quotes in Erlang) is. </p></li>
<li><p>There is a framework for Unicode identifiers in
Unicode standard annex 31 (UAX#31), and several
programming languages, including Ada, Java,
C++, C, C#, Javascript, and Python (section 2.3 of
<a href="http://docs.python.org/release/3.1.5/reference/lexical_analysis.html" title="2. Lexical Analysis - Python 3.1.5 Documentation">Python's Lexical Analysis</a> and see also
<a href="http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-3131/" title="PEP 3131 -- Supporting Non-ASCII Identifiers">PEP 3131</a>). </p></li>
<li><p>Existing Erlang identifiers should remain valid,
including ones containing "@" and ".". </p></li>
<li><p>Existing Erlang support features, such as ignoring
names of the form [_][a-zA-Z0-9_]* when reporting
singleton variables, should not be broken. </p></li>
<li><p>We should not "steal" any characters to use as "magic
markers" for variables because they might be needed for
other purposes. A good (bad) example of this is "?", which
could be used for several things if it were not used for macros. </p></li>
</ol>
<h1>Rationale</h1>
<p>Names of sets of characters, XID_Start, XID_Continue, Lu, Lt, Lo, Pc,
Other_Id_Start, are drawn from Unicode and UAX#31.</p>
<pre><code>Lu = upper case letters
Lt = title case letters
Pc = connector punctuators, including the low line (_) and
a number of other characters like undertie (‿).
Other_Id_Start = script capital p, estimated symbol,
katakana-hiragana voiced sound mark, and
katakana-hiragana semi-voiced sound mark.
</code></pre>
<h2>Variables</h2>
<pre><code>variable ::= var_start var_continue*
var_start ::= XID_Start ∩ (Lu ∪ Lt ∪ Pc ∪ Other_Id_Start)
var_continue ::= XID_Continue U "@"
</code></pre>
<p>The choice of XID here follows Python. It ensures that the normalisation
of a variable is still a variable. In fact Unicode variables should be
normalised. Unicode has enough look-alike characters that we cannot hope
for "look the same <=> are the same" to be true, but we should go <em>some</em>
way in that direction. </p>
<p>Variables in scripts that do not distinguish letter case have to
begin with <em>some</em> special character to ensure that they are not
mistaken for unquoted atoms. There are 10 Pc characters in the Basic
Multilingual Plane. The Erlang parser treats a variable beginning
with an underscore specially: there will be no complaint if it is a
singleton. There are 9 other Pc characters for which this special
treatment is not applied. Of course, someone might be using fonts
that do include say Arabic letters but not say the undertie. We can
deal with that by revising the underscore rule.</p>
<pre><code>Variable does not begin with a Pc character =>
should not be a singleton.
Variable is just a Pc character and nothing else =>
is a wild card.
Variable begins with a Pc character followed by a
Latin-1 character =>
may be a singleton.
Variable begins with a Pc character following by
a character outside the Latin-1 range =>
should not be a singleton.
</code></pre>
<p>Thus ‿ is a wild-card, 隠者 is an atom, _隠者 should not be
a singleton, but __隠者 _may_ be a singleton. This rule is a
consistent generalisation of the existing rule. </p>
<h2>Unquoted Atoms</h2>
<pre><code>unquoted_atom ::= atom_start atom_continue
atom_start ::= XID_Start \ (Lu ∪ Lt ∪ Lo ∪ Pc)
| "." (Ll ∪ Lo)
atom_continue ::= XID_Continue U "@"
| "." (Ll ∪ Lo)
</code></pre>
<p>Again the choice of XID follows Python, and ensures that the
normalisation of an unquoted atom is still an unquoted atom.
Unquoted atoms should be normalised. </p>
<p>The details of Erlang unquoted atoms are somewhat subtle; I have
checked my understanding experimentally. </p>
<h2>Keywords</h2>
<p>Keywords have the form of unquoted atoms. No new keywords are
introduced.</p>
<h2>Specifics</h2>
<ul>
<li><p>Any Python identifier or keyword is
an Erlang variable or unquoted atom or keyword. </p></li>
<li><p>@ signs may occur freely in variables and unquoted atoms except as the
first character, as now. </p></li>
<li><p>dots may not be followed by capital letters, digits, or underscores,
as now. </p></li>
<li><p>I am not sure whether modifier letters should be allowed after a dot. </p></li>
<li><p>I am not sure what to do with the Other_ID_Start characters.
Script capital p <em>looks</em> like a capital p and even has "capital" in
its name. All other "* SCRIPT CAPITAL *" characters are upper case
letters. Surely it should be allowed to start a variable.
The estimated sign looks like an enlarged lower case e; other symbols
that look like letters are classified as letters. You'd expect this
to begin an atom. As for the Katakana-Hiragana voicing marks, I have
no intuition whatever. Assigning the whole group to atoms seems
safest. </p></li>
<li><p>All existing variable names and unquoted atoms remain legal, and no
new variable or atom forms using only Latin-1 characters have been
introduced. </p></li>
</ul>
<h1>Edit Notes</h1>
<p>For convenience, quoting [EEP 33], the EEP markdown template: </p>
<p>See the <a href="http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/" title="Markdown Home Page">Markdown</a> Syntax for general formatting syntax. <em>On top</em> of
this Markdown EEPs has these requirements: </p>
<p>You must adhere to the Emacs convention of adding two spaces at the
end of every sentence. You should fill your paragraphs to column 70,
but under no circumstances should your lines extend past column 79.
If your code samples spill over column 79, you should rewrite them. </p>
<p>Tab characters must never appear in the document at all. </p>
<p>When referencing an external web page in the body of an EEP, you
should include the title of the page in the text, with a footnote
reference to the URL. Do not include the URL in the body text of the
EEP. E.g:</p>
<pre><code>Refer to the [Erlang Language web site][1] for more details.
:
[1]: http://www.erlang.org
"Erlang Programming Language"
</code></pre>
<p>Footnote references ... are invisible in the <a href="http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/" title="Markdown Home Page">Markdown</a>
generated HTML.</p>
<h1>Copyright</h1>
<p><em>Pending the author's acknowledgement:</em></p>
<p>This document has been placed in the public domain.</p>
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