From: darix@... Date: 2016-06-10T11:26:21+00:00 Subject: [ruby-core:75940] [Ruby trunk Feature#715] Ruby interpreter should understand UTF-8 symbols with special meaning Issue #715 has been updated by Marcus R��ckert. Jan Maurits Faber wrote: > This is not simply because it would look pretty, it would reduce the cognitive load on the programmer. At the moment many ascii characters are overloaded to mean different things in different contexts. Especially characters like $, :, > and =. If the relevant symbols were used then the brains of the programmer would be free to do more useful things. counter point: the advantage of all those ascii chars is I can type them easily because they are reflected on my keyboard. memorizing all the code points of those special Unicode chars so i can enter them, is not really helping me. and i dont want to program with some character selection app open all the time. now you could argue that editors could replace those ascii char combinations with the unicode chars automatically, similar to what firacode and so do. but then ... why? I still typed the same stuff as before. and if it is just a display issue. use firacode and friends. ---------------------------------------- Feature #715: Ruby interpreter should understand UTF-8 symbols with special meaning https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/715#change-59134 * Author: Jan Maurits Faber * Status: Rejected * Priority: Normal * Assignee: ---------------------------------------- I would like the ruby interpreter to understand symbols such as the greater-than-or-equal sign, as an alias for '>='. This is not simply because it would look pretty, it would reduce the cognitive load on the programmer. At the moment many ascii characters are overloaded to mean different things in different contexts. Especially characters like $, :, > and =. If the relevant symbols were used then the brains of the programmer would be free to do more useful things. For example, something like: ```ruby a>=b ? {:a=>!b} : nil ``` Could be displayed as: ```ruby a���b ? :a ��� ��b : ��� ``` (in case the UTF-8 characters don't come across: I just replaced several characters with mathematical symbols) If the Ruby interpreter would support this then text editors can be improved to automatically insert the appropriate symbol. I don't know of any language that can do this yet, so it would be a unique selling point for Ruby, but it would seem rather easy to implement. -- https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/ Unsubscribe: