bear <xxxxxx@sonic.net> writes:

> I agree that certain characters ought not appear in
> identifiers without use of some escape mechanism.  But
> rather than list them, I'd prefer to do it by category.

Yes. SRFI-75 currently talks about "whitespace", and I think this
has to be extended.

> Just looking at the categories, I think characters with
> the "General Category" of CC (control characters) CF
> (formatting controls), PS (open punctuation), PC (close
> punctuation) ZL (line separator), ZP (paragraph separator)
> and ZS (space separator) should probably be excluded from
> identifiers.

I agree with that (from a quick skim through the Unicode list that
looks good). I'm a bit reluctant about Ps and Pc, but for example
< and > is not in that list, so that might be ok.

> If we want to reserve a bunch of characters for reader
> macros in implementations where reader macros are definable,
> I'd suggest the class SO (other symbols, including dingbats);
> they're eyecatching, occasionally iconic, and for the most
> part linguistically neutral.

Dingbats can make nice identifiers! ;-)

No really, I don't think we should reserve characters for such a
use. If we exclude Ps and Pc, there are a lot of possible
characters for use there already. No need to create more.

Greetings,
        -- Jorgen

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