Comment 16 for bug 1328169

> Is there a conflict between this and some other use-case or specification?

It's work to implement and maintain, and that's a reason to not do it.

Also, I can't rule out the possibility that people are assigning to _, and would want to know if that's unused. I would say that's an uncommon use case, but then so is this. And this isn't an entirely hypothetical guess: _ is a common common identifier for gettext-like functions.

> I'd say that is a stance of denial

It's not denial, it's laziness and skepticism. Please remember that this is an open source project made for your benefit entirely for free. Your success in getting this change implemented will depend more on how much work you put into it than how vehemently you argue for it.

You can do two things to help.

Firstly, research. What is the relative frequency of _ being used as an "intentionally unused" identifier (as you are), versus using _ as an ordinary identifier that just happens to be an underscore (gettext)? You'll need to provide real links to real code, preferably projects used by a lot of people and regarded as canonical sources. If you can demonstrate that a lot of people have your problem, and that addressing your problem won't create a lot of problems for other people, that will certainly make the case a lot stronger.

Secondly, you can submit a patch implementing the change you seek and with tests. That will significantly lower the barrier to implementing this change.

If you do both of those things, I guarantee this change will be in the next release.