Conflict between std.file write() and std.stdio write()

[Jonathan M Davis]

On Thursday, October 03, 2013 22:57:22 Craig Dillabaugh wrote:
> On Thursday, 3 October 2013 at 19:49:07 UTC, Jonathan M Davis
> 
> wrote:
> > On Thursday, October 03, 2013 20:57:20 Craig Dillabaugh wrote:
> >> On Thursday, 3 October 2013 at 18:12:01 UTC, Jonathan M Davis
> 
> clip
> 
> >> > - Jonathan M Davis
> >> 
> >> Fair enough. As you point out the fix is pretty simple.
> >> 
> >> However, I can't seem to remember in C++ or any other language
> >> (not that I know all that many other languages) coming across a
> >> function in the standard library that conflicted with another
> >> function in the standard library in this way. I am likely to
> >> get
> >> corrected on that claim though :o)
> > 
> > I'm sure that it could be found somewhere, but C++ avoids it
> > for two reasons:
> > 
> > 1. As good as the STL is, it's pathetically small.
> > 2. It only uses one namespace, so it _has_ to avoid conflicts,
> > even if that
> > means using uglier names.
> > 
> > Java or C# might have some conflicts (I'm not sure - they
> > certainly have much
> > richer standard libraries than C++ does), but they almost
> > always avoid it,
> > because they're don't even allow free functions, so you only
> > end up having to
> > worry about class names conflicting. Their module systems are
> > also different
> > from D's (particularly C#'s), which changes things a bit.
> > 
> > Other languages like python tend to force you to give the full
> > path anyway,
> > which avoids conflicts.
> > 
> > The reason that D runs into them is because the default is to
> > pull everything
> > into the current module when you import it. If we'd taken the
> > approach of
> > making you give the full import path by default or forcing you
> > to explicitly
> > import each symbol, then it wouldn't be a problem (though that
> > would obviously
> > cause other problems).
> > 
> > And we'll definitely pick different names where appropriate,
> > but if the best
> > names for two different functions in two different modules
> > happen to be the same
> > name, then we're going to use it. And in same cases, we very
> > purposely picked
> > the same name, because the functions did the same type of thing
> > (e.g. the
> > functions in std.ascii and std.uni which do the same thing but
> > for ASCII and
> > Unicode respectively).
> > 
> > - Jonathan M Davis
> 
> That is an excellent explanation. Thank you.
> 
> Do you think it would be worth noting the conflict in the
> documentation for readText()/write()?
> 
> I should have mentioned in my original post that I likely could
> have figured out the workaround for this, and I posted here more
> because I was surprised that std.stdio and std.file would have a
> conflict! It seems like something folks new to D might run into
> with some frequency, and be thinking "whats up with that!".
> 
> If others think it is a good idea, maybe I will head over to
> gitHub and try to add something.

I'm inclined to think that there's no need, since people learning D should 
know how the module system works, and I'd prefer not to clutter the 
documentation, but I also haven't been a newbie for a very long time.

- Jonathan M Davis