Introduction

minCe significantly reduces the disk, desk and brain space required for code repositories and version control systems that C and related programming languages require.

Background

Like most developers, I was taught at college that the power of C and its descendent languages derives from its terse compact syntax. However, when I was looking at some source files recently I made a somewhat startling discovery - the files were saved as Unicode!

This makes sense, of course, because any string constants in these files need to be able to store all of the human languages so need to use all the possible characters. However the language specification itself does not use anything except standard ASCII which is hugely wasteful.

What follows is a proposal to use some of these Unicode characters in place of C or C++ keywords to reduce the file size without sacrificing any of the inherent readability of those languages.

null (or nothing shall come of nothing)

The keyword null is used extensively by developers when they need to avoid the ignominity of trying to do something with nothing.

The proposal is to replace the keyword null with the character ʘ( U+0298)

assignment is not equality

One of the biggest problems in computing is the difference between assignment and equality. How to tell whether a line of code is meant to compare or assign a value is something that no programming language has solved and C's elegant == equality indicator is still an extra character. Fortunately there are other symbols in the unicode table that can resolve this ambiguity - I propose using the characters ͇̿ (U+0347 and U+033F) to stack the two equals on top of each other (I realise this won't save any actual memory but the screen space saving could equate to enough money saved to provide a lollipop to every child in a small town like Gainsborough)

public or private

Access modifiers are another very common keyword. Fortunately the forward thinking of the creators of the Cyrillic alphabet (who were both called Cyril, it transpires) have plenty of spare characters we can use in their place. I'd suggest Ѿ (U+047E) for private and Ҝ (U+094C)

Consultation

Nothing in language is set in stone (with the possible exception of the Rosetta stone, cuniform, in fact quiet a lot.) so this is where your opinion counts. Please leave suggestions for minifications below...