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gh-135676: Simplify docs on lexing names #140464

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Merged
encukou merged 8 commits into from
Nov 26, 2025
Merged

gh-135676: Simplify docs on lexing names #140464

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4606120
Simplify Names section
encukou Oct 8, 2025
6163c24
Casing; 3 dots for character ranges
encukou Oct 22, 2025
de6d1af
Clean-ups
encukou Oct 22, 2025
152e7aa
Mention Unicode's *ID_Start* and *ID_Continue*
encukou Oct 22, 2025
fce5e98
Make it clear that `nᵘₘᵇₑʳ` normalizes to `number`
encukou Oct 29, 2025
b9fdcf0
WIP
encukou Nov 12, 2025
2e7f7c0
Merge in the main branch
encukou Nov 19, 2025
43f6091
Reword to use XID_Start and XID_Continue
encukou Nov 19, 2025
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Casing; 3 dots for character ranges
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@encukou
encukou committed Oct 22, 2025
commit 6163c24f21edf615c4066de1a721f5a48a9d7092
12 changes: 6 additions & 6 deletions Doc/reference/lexical_analysis.rst
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Expand Up @@ -388,10 +388,10 @@ Names (identifiers and keywords)

Names are composed of the following characters:

* Uppercase and lowercase letters (``A-Z`` and ``a-z``)
* The underscore (``_``)
* Digits (``0`` through ``9``), which cannot appear as the first character
* Non-ASCII characters. Valid names may only contain "letter-like" and
* uppercase and lowercase letters (``A-Z`` and ``a-z``),
* the underscore (``_``),
* digits (``0`` through ``9``), which cannot appear as the first character, and
* non-ASCII characters. Valid names may only contain "letter-like" and
"digit-like" characters; see :ref:`lexical-names-nonascii` for details.

Names must contain at least one character, but have no upper length limit.
Expand All @@ -403,8 +403,8 @@ Formally, names are described by the following lexical definitions:
:group: python-grammar

NAME: `name_start` `name_continue`*
name_start: "a".."z" | "A".."Z" | "_" | <non-ASCII character>
name_continue: name_start | "0".."9"
name_start: "a"..."z" | "A"..."Z" | "_" | <non-ASCII character>
name_continue: name_start | "0"..."9"
identifier: <`NAME`, except keywords>

Note that not all names matched by this grammar are valid; see
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