Issue 1670 in lilypond: Allow numbers in variable names: violin1mvt2 = c'

[lilypond]

Status: Accepted
Owner: ----
Labels: Type-Enhancement Priority-Postponed

New issue 1670 by address@hidden: Allow numbers in variable names:  
violin1mvt2 = c'
http://code.google.com/p/lilypond/issues/detail?id=1670

Users often request variable names including numbers or underscores
(http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/lilypond-user/2011-05/msg00177.html)

1) It is not too hard for the lexer, which breaks input into tokens, to  
accept backslashed variable names with various characters.
(http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/lilypond-devel/2004-03/msg00124.html)

We could then use something like:
   "violin1" = { c d e }
   \new Staff \violin1
but what do we really want to allow in variable names?

I don't think underscores are a good idea, because both human and computer  
could be confused:
 c^\slide_1 % is that slide on the first finger or did somebody define  
\slide_1 ?

Ending in a number would require we enforce the space after a command (and  
convert-ly old scores) for cases like  \times2/3{c d e}


2) There is considerable difficulty in telling Lilypond to be ready for the  
definition of a variable that looks somewhat like, because the grammar  
allows un-braced music expressions and user-defined functions.
  \mySpecialAfterGrace do1 re2 mo3 = fa2

Lily would need to know how many arguments \MySpecialAfterGrace takes to  
know whether she needs to look up 'mo' as the name of a pitch in some  
language.
Either that, or tentatively read through to the '=' and then back up when  
she realized 'mo' was not a mis-typed note name.

(2) might be impossible, but maybe users want \violin1 badly enough to use  
quotes around it in the definition, as I did above?