I made an interesting transition a few years ago, and started using Unicode in my programs. (1) I have an i18n mapping which provides native support for a lot

I made an interesting transition a few years ago, and started using Unicode in my programs. (1) I have an i18n mapping which provides native support for a lot of helpful characters. Both Mac and Linux use all the keys, so in addition to the half-dozen characters with accents, I have access to a lot more directly. Mac and Linux do remap the remaining keys differently, though. (2) My code got a lot more readable. Δx is easier to read and more concise than delta_x. (3) I have a lot more characters to pick from. A lot of the issues you raise with regexp are due to limits of ASCII. For more esoteric characters, I do Google and either enter alt codes or cut-and-paste, which might sound like , but remember that you write code once, and read it many times. And editors are increasingly good. Beyond Unicode, one does have text formats with support for colors, bold, and whatnot, either embedded (escape codes in text) or as syntax highlighting (editor parses). The CS-level reg exps seem like a good idea. The implementation -- where they're encoded as bizarre ASCII escape sequences -- could use a good revamp. Oddly enough, I think this is my first HN post where I went beyond ASCII.... Edit: And HN filtered out a bunch of Unicode. It kept only the delta.