title: Defining unicode variables in Python
body: <p>Recently, I have been reading about the Python source code encoding, especially <a href="https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0263/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">PEP 263</a> and <a href="https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-3120/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">PEP 3120</a>.</p>
  
  <p>I have the following code:</p>
  
  <pre><code># coding:utf-8
  
  s = 'abc∂´ƒ©'
  ƒ = 'My name is'
  ß = '˚ß˙ˆ†ˆ∆ ßå®åø©ˆ'
  print('s =', s)
  print('ƒ =', ƒ, 'ß =', ß)
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>This code works fine for Python3 but results in a <code>SyntaxError</code> in Python2.7 .<br>
  I do understand that this probably might have nothing to do with source code encoding.<br>
  So, I would like to know if there is a way to support Unicode variable names in Python2.</p>
  
  <p>In all, I am also having a hard time figuring out what pragmatic problem the PEPs exactly aim to solve and how(and where) do I take advantage of the proposed solutions. I have read few discussions on the same but they do not present an answer to my question rather an explanation of the correct syntax:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li><a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/728891/correct-way-to-define-python-source-code-encoding">Correct way to define Python source code encoding</a></li>
  <li><a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6289474/working-with-utf-8-encoding-in-python-source">Working with utf-8 encoding in Python source</a></li>
  <li><a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4872007/where-does-this-come-from-coding-utf-8">Where does this come from: -*- coding: utf-8 -*-</a></li>
  <li><a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/41680533/is-coding-utf-8-also-a-comment-in-python">Is &#39;# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-&#39; also a comment in Python?</a></li>
  </ul>