Use λ,φ,α,... in the jupyter notebook, just as in julia

Question

As some of you probably know, you can use λ,φ,α,.., in any julia script. Couldnt this also be possible for python? I would use julia, but there are still some packages from python which I would have to wrap.

Best wishes

Answer 1

Python 3 supports λ,φ,α and many other Unicode characters in identifiers (as mentioned by @jwodder). In jupyter notebook, you can access these characters by typing

\<character name><tab>

Example

\alpha<tab> = 1
# α = 1

---

Not all Unicode characters can be used as variable names, e.g. emojis:

>>> ♥ = "love"
  File "<ipython-input-29-97d253080b57>", line 1
    ♥ = "love"
    ^
SyntaxError: invalid character in identifier

However, letter-like characters are allowed, particularly in foreign languages:

>>> αγαπώ = "love"
>>> люблю = "love"
>>> 愛 = "love"

See also David Beazley's talk Mastering Python 3 I/O for more on practical uses of Unicode.

• REF 001: Unicode variables names
• REF 002: PEP 3131 - Supporting Non-ASCII Identifiers
• REF 003: Unicode HOWTO