Groups > comp.lang.c > #401914

Re: Support of Unicode characters in various places (was Re: c needs this sign)

From	Janis Papanagnou <janis_papanagnou+ng@hotmail.com>
Newsgroups	comp.lang.c
Subject	Re: Support of Unicode characters in various places (was Re: c needs this sign)
Date	2026-09-10 23:13 +0200
Organization	A noiseless patient Spider
Message-ID	<117v6hh$1ls9s$3@dont-email.me> (permalink)
References	(3 earlier) <117ohlt$3ui33$2@dont-email.me> <117r6it$3r5qn$5@dont-email.me> <117rffa$s9ir$6@dont-email.me> <117schh$3r5qn$8@dont-email.me> <117tkl6$1o1jf$1@dont-email.me>

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On 2026-09-10 09:01, David Brown wrote:
> On 09/09/2026 21:37, Janis Papanagnou wrote:
> [...]
>>   - national program identifiers (some languages support that)
> 
> I think most modern programming languages support that - including C99. 
> I don't think they are commonly used in practice, but they are supported.

Frankly, I cannot tell. I know just a small subset of the "modern
languages".

But if I just try, for example, my shell I see that while Kornshell
seems to support that the (nowadays more widely used) Bash does not.
Awk (in its form of the active and maintained GNU Awk) also doesn't
support it.

> 
>>   - support for national language keywords (cf. Algol 68, e.g.)
> 
> Algol 68, AIUI, also had a number of special symbols as operators. 

I'm not sure what you mean by that.

(In Algol 68 you have many standard operators, as symbols and names,
and you have the option to define own operators by overloading the
existing operator symbols and names for new argument types, and also
by defining own new operators by new symbols and symbol combinations
(there's some restrictions here, though), or by arbitrary new operator
names.

Specific characters (like the multiplication char 'x') may have been
supported on a platform but I don't see that they would have worked
in a portable way on other systems that didn't support that character.

> [...]
>> [...]
> 
> Usually mixing languages (or writing systems) increases cognitive load,

Yes.

> and that's never a good idea. 

(But see example quoted below.)

> But sometimes you only really know the 
> word or term in one non-English language, or the word may not have a 
> sensible translation to English - using the original term in identifiers 
> can be easier than trying to invent some word in English. 

I think it's depending on the actual semantics of the respective word.
Low level there's IMO rarely needed to use ones native language. High
level, where you describe the actual real-life entities, it makes much
more sense! (I.e. to not translate the terms to the lingua franca.)

> How often 
> this occurs will of course depend on the kind of programming you are doing.
> 
>> In some contexts we also used a mixed approach concerning identifiers.
>> High-level identifiers were written in German to reflect the entities
>> in the requirements and specification documents - this proved really
>> helpful! - and technical low-level identifiers were in English. That
>> may sound strange but it worked pretty well (despite its peculiarity).
> 
> I can understand that.

>> [...]
> 
> There needs to be some kind of "plan B" for people without easy access 
> to the characters.  Trigraphs have been used, but they are a very messy 
> solution - you are replacing a (presumably) clear symbol with multiple 
> unclear ones. 

I've yet to hear that anyone actually used trigraphs. - Weren't they,
because of that, even removed from recent "C" (or C++) standards?

> A <iso646.h> style is better, where someone lacking a ^ 
> key can write "xor" instead.

I don't know what the <iso646.h> header actually is. - The "problem"
with "ISO 646" is that there's many (national) variants of it. - If
we're speaking about the ISO 646 IRV (International Reference Version)
there's a '^' available at least. (Which doesn't mean it's available
on specific national keyboards, though.)

But generally I'd think the ISO 646 IRV would be (widely) sensible as
base for writing programs [in programming languages that are typically
defined in the western cultures].

> 
>> Another option, not as strongly connected to the language, would be to
>> have language support for defining operators (but in a more flexible
>> way than, say, C++ allows it[*]).
> 
> Yes.  (C++ lets you make definitions for overloads of existing 
> operators, but it does not let you make your own operators.  Haskell and 
> Forth are examples of languages that support user-defined operators.)

(As Algol 68.)

>> [...]
> 
> The more general the audience, the more you have to target the lowest 
> common denominator. [...]

Yes, that's the essence.

Janis

Thread

c needs this sign fir <profesor.fir@gmail.com> - 2026-09-07 15:53 +0200
  Re: c needs this sign David LaRue <huey.dll@tampabay.rr.com> - 2026-09-07 19:21 +0000
    Re: c needs this sign Janis Papanagnou <janis_papanagnou+ng@hotmail.com> - 2026-09-08 01:10 +0200
      Re: c needs this sign Dan Purgert <dan@djph.net> - 2026-09-07 23:13 +0000
        Re: c needs this sign Lane W <cactus_DAC@yahoo.com> - 2026-09-07 17:26 -0600
      Re: c needs this sign David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2026-09-08 10:40 +0200
        Re: c needs this sign Janis Papanagnou <janis_papanagnou+ng@hotmail.com> - 2026-09-09 10:49 +0200
          Re: c needs this sign David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2026-09-09 13:21 +0200
            Re: c needs this sign fir <profesor.fir@gmail.com> - 2026-09-09 13:33 +0200
            Support of Unicode characters in various places (was Re: c needs this sign) Janis Papanagnou <janis_papanagnou+ng@hotmail.com> - 2026-09-09 21:37 +0200
              Re: Support of Unicode characters in various places (was Re: c needs this sign) David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2026-09-10 09:01 +0200
                Re: Support of Unicode characters in various places (was Re: c needs this sign) Janis Papanagnou <janis_papanagnou+ng@hotmail.com> - 2026-09-10 23:13 +0200
                Re: Support of Unicode characters in various places (was Re: c needs this sign) Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com> - 2026-09-10 14:54 -0700
                Re: Support of Unicode characters in various places (was Re: c needs this sign) scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) - 2026-09-10 22:17 +0000
                Re: Support of Unicode characters in various places (was Re: c needs this sign) Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com> - 2026-09-10 15:48 -0700
                Re: Support of Unicode characters in various places (was Re: c needs this sign) bart <bc@freeuk.com> - 2026-09-11 10:51 +0100
                Re: Support of Unicode characters in various places (was Re: c needs this sign) David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2026-09-11 12:49 +0200
                Re: Support of Unicode characters in various places (was Re: c needs this sign) scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) - 2026-09-11 16:28 +0000
                Re: Support of Unicode characters in various places (was Re: c needs this sign) Janis Papanagnou <janis_papanagnou+ng@hotmail.com> - 2026-09-11 02:03 +0200
                Re: Support of Unicode characters in various places (was Re: c needs this sign) Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com> - 2026-09-10 17:13 -0700
                Re: Support of Unicode characters in various places (was Re: c needs this sign) Janis Papanagnou <janis_papanagnou+ng@hotmail.com> - 2026-09-11 02:24 +0200
                Re: Support of Unicode characters in various places (was Re: c needs this sign) David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2026-09-11 09:42 +0200
          Re: c needs this sign fir <profesor.fir@gmail.com> - 2026-09-09 23:59 +0200
            Re: c needs this sign fir <profesor.fir@gmail.com> - 2026-09-10 00:04 +0200
              Re: c needs this sign fir <profesor.fir@gmail.com> - 2026-09-10 00:16 +0200
                Re: c needs this sign fir <profesor.fir@gmail.com> - 2026-09-10 00:30 +0200
              Re: c needs this sign bart <bc@freeuk.com> - 2026-09-09 23:44 +0100
                Re: c needs this sign fir <profesor.fir@gmail.com> - 2026-09-10 00:55 +0200
                Re: c needs this sign fir <profesor.fir@gmail.com> - 2026-09-10 01:09 +0200
                Re: c needs this sign fir <profesor.fir@gmail.com> - 2026-09-10 01:21 +0200
                Re: c needs this sign fir <profesor.fir@gmail.com> - 2026-09-10 01:36 +0200
                Re: c needs this sign fir <profesor.fir@gmail.com> - 2026-09-10 01:45 +0200
                Re: c needs this sign Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2026-09-15 07:23 +0000
      Re: c needs this sign fir <profesor.fir@gmail.com> - 2026-09-08 11:56 +0200
        Re: c needs this sign bart <bc@freeuk.com> - 2026-09-08 11:14 +0100
          Re: c needs this sign fir <profesor.fir@gmail.com> - 2026-09-08 12:28 +0200
          Re: c needs this sign Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com> - 2026-09-08 03:54 -0700
            Re: c needs this sign fir <profesor.fir@gmail.com> - 2026-09-08 13:13 +0200
            = vs. == (again!) (Was: c needs this sign) gazelle@shell.xmission.com (Kenny McCormack) - 2026-09-08 14:39 +0000
              Re: = vs. == (again!) (Was: c needs this sign) Tim Rentsch <tr.17687@z991.linuxsc.com> - 2026-10-14 23:36 -0700
            Re: c needs this sign Janis Papanagnou <janis_papanagnou+ng@hotmail.com> - 2026-09-09 11:13 +0200
          Re: c needs this sign Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2026-09-09 00:29 +0000
            Re: c needs this sign "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> - 2026-09-10 13:42 -0700
      Re: c needs this sign fir <profesor.fir@gmail.com> - 2026-09-08 15:12 +0200
  Re: c needs this sign Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2026-09-08 03:33 +0000
    Re: c needs this sign fir <profesor.fir@gmail.com> - 2026-09-08 12:02 +0200
      Re: c needs this sign Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2026-09-09 00:27 +0000

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