Which languages allow emoji identifiers?
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For an exercise, I would like to create some sample program where identifiers are easy to discern, but otherwise make no sense at all. So I got this weird idea that emoji would serve that purpose well.
Now because most language designers do understand it is a
in any sort of production code, most languages, if they allow unicode at all, only allow letters, digits and a couple of special characters.The only language I can readily remember as allowing emoji is swift, but we'll have mostly Windows and I hate
with passion so I'm not touching that with 10 meter pole anyway. Otherwise I am open to almost anything.So which other languages could I use?
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@bulb I think TCL would probably work for you. almost any string can be used as a command name or variable name. Maybe @dkf can confirm?
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also:
@jbert said in clustering:
@pie_flavor It's more fun to put your compiler in Unicode mode and use Emoji variables.
StringBuilder oh💩 = new StringBuilder(); oh💩.append("We are sorry for this outage. Please stand by while we look at the problem"); System.out.println(oh💩.toString());
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I found a good candidate:
$ php -a Interactive shell php > function 😃($😂) { php { return $😂+1; php { } php > echo 😃(3); 4 php >
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@bulb Java and Rust spring to mind. PowerShell would work too. I don't know if C# does it or not.
edit:
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@pie_flavor Rust only allows XID_Continue for identifiers (and only XID_Start at the beginning), and emoji aren't XID_Continue.
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@ben_warre said in Which languages allow emoji identifiers?:
also:
@jbert said in clustering:
@pie_flavor It's more fun to put your compiler in Unicode mode and use Emoji variables.
StringBuilder oh💩 = new StringBuilder(); oh💩.append("We are sorry for this outage. Please stand by while we look at the problem"); System.out.println(oh💩.toString());@Ben_Warre I have since edited my post to make it clear I was joking and added this:
It looks like I should have clearly stated that I was joking. However, Java does allow a lot of Unicode characters which are marked as a Letter in Unicode and you can check with
Character.isJavaIdentifierStart(int)orCharacter.isJavaIdentifierPart(int).This means that Katakana characters like ツ or Greek characters like π are no issue.
Somebody on StackOverflow had the following example:
int ಢ_ಢ = 42;So you can do some special smileys, but emojis are still out for the moment.
EDIT: See Lowercase letters, Uppercase letters or Letters, other for inspiration (click on the "List" link at the bottom of the page).
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@jbert boo!
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@ben_warre ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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I thought javascript did, but my (chrome) browser console disagrees. I can confirm PHP though.
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Found another one:
Though it doesn’t work without||around the identifiers: the script fails with an error about an unknown token.
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@pleegwat said in Which languages allow emoji identifiers?:
I thought javascript did, but my (chrome) browser console disagrees. I can confirm PHP though.
Not the same thing, but:
» o = { '😂': () => '💩' } < Object { "😂": 😂() } » o['😂']() < "💩"
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Swift allows this IIRC
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4 years ago...
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@bb36e said in Which languages allow emoji identifiers?:
Swift allows this IIRC
You were
d by the OP.
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@ben_warre said in Which languages allow emoji identifiers?:
I think TCL would probably work for you. almost any string can be used as a command name or variable name. Maybe @dkf can confirm?
Commands can use anything (with exceptions for multi-colon sequences), but expressions are more restricted so I don't recommend using variable names with non-ASCII names. Array element names are completely free.
I also don't recommend using emoji in identifiers in any language.
Ever.
Just No.
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@antiquarian said in Which languages allow emoji identifiers?:
https://twitter.com/t3xtm0de/status/600711130324008961?lang=en
Just as comprehensible as regular Haskell!
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@pie_flavor The worst part is I know exactly what it does.
spoiler
It's a map function.
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@dkf said in Which languages allow emoji identifiers?:
Commands can use anything (with exceptions for multi-colon sequences), but expressions are more restricted so I don't recommend using variable names with non-ASCII names. Array element names are completely free.
Thought so. Here's the evidence from an interactive session
sh$ tclsh8.6 % proc 🙁 {x y} {expr { $x**2 + $y }} % 🙁 3 4 13(That looks really strange in my terminal; apparently my fixed-width font doesn't give emoji the same fixed width as everything else. Because why would you want that?!)
C# Online Compiler | .NET Fiddle
