Would it include digamma, san, koppa, or sampi... Or strictly Koine letters?
To a lesser extent than Greek, Hebrew letters are also used commonly in math. What about the double struck capitals like ℤ, ℚ, and ℕ? It kinda feels like a very simple third party module couple give many such names for "characters used in such-and-such domain." On Fri, Apr 9, 2021, 9:34 AM <[email protected]> wrote: > I was wondering if it might be reasonable to consider adding a set of > Greek letters to the constants in the `string` module. In my mind, the > format would follow the existing convention—constants for both > `greek_lowercase` and `greek_uppercase`, as well as a combined constant > `greek_letters`. > > Judging by how these constants are defined in the module, this seems like > it might be an almost trivially easy addition (with minimal future > maintenance required), and could provide a neat little functionality. Where > Python 3 already uses unicode strings, I don't believe this would cause any > backward compatibility issues. > > The only one drawback I can see might be polluting the namespace if it is > not a commonly used feature. That said, the Greek alphabet is used so > commonly in math/science that I'd hazard a guess it might be valuable for > some, especially as unicode becomes increasingly prevalent. Obviously > developers could build their own similar constant just by creating a string > with those characters, but this would save a step, whether that's adding a > dependency or copying/pasting a handful of characters. I also anticipate > that the argument may come up that this opens a can of worms, and then why > not include even more symbols. I think that is a valid concern, though I > think the Greek alphabet is somewhat unique in it's prevalence (due to it's > use in math/science), on top of the fact that it is both limited and > permanent (in a way that things like logograms and emojis may not be). > > I'm certainly not an expert on the Python source code though, so please > correct me if there's an obvious reason not to add this or if this has been > debated before :) > _______________________________________________ > Python-ideas mailing list -- [email protected] > To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected] > https://mail.python.org/mailman3/lists/python-ideas.python.org/ > Message archived at > https://mail.python.org/archives/list/[email protected]/message/STABL2VLT2XQV3XO6S7OBVAABJR6QVEN/ > Code of Conduct: http://python.org/psf/codeofconduct/ >
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