From: jmfaber@... Date: 2016-06-10T12:12:05+00:00 Subject: [ruby-core:75941] [Ruby trunk Feature#715] Ruby interpreter should understand UTF-8 symbols with special meaning Issue #715 has been updated by Jan Maurits Faber. It's really easy to remember: to type ��� is just alt + >, to type ��� is alt + < and ��� is alt + =, so I don't think you would need a character picker for very long. But more importantly using the new symbols would be entirely optional. If you don't like them then the ASCII way would of course keep working forever. The Firacode is an interesting hack but it is very limited, it is not able to understand the difference between "==" used inside a string and == used inside code, for example, and mathematical symbols like pi (��, alt + p, easy right?) or logical not (��, alt-l) do not have a straightforward ascii equivalent. ---------------------------------------- Feature #715: Ruby interpreter should understand UTF-8 symbols with special meaning https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/715#change-59135 * 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: