Non-ASCII identifiers (was: Re: [fpc-devel] Forwarded message about FPC status)

[Marco van de Voort]

In our previous episode, Mark Morgan Lloyd said:
> > too. So if somebody implements non ASCII identifiers because he needs a 
> > second source Delphi compiler it will be merged because the addition does not 
> > break existing code. I assume utf-8 identifiers would not be very difficult 
> > to do in compiler.
> 
> But what will the rule be as to whether something's a valid identifier? 
> Will it have to start with something known to be a letter, or something 
> not known to be a digit or reserved character?

Afaik the latter. You specify what is not allowed rather than which are
allowed.

But sourcecode edited on multiple platforms might be a problem, (e.g.
ligatures, denormalization and other forms of slightly different
characters), this could lead to making the comparison of identifiers
expensive, which is what you don't want in a compiler.

But I don't know how big that problem would be. Maybe it is negiable.