Why import statements are not allowed in function bodies (or any block of code)?

[Leandro Lucarella]

David Wilson, el  1 de febrero a las 12:52 me escribiste:
> On 1/28/08, Leandro Lucarella <llucax at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Is there any good reason for not allowing import statements in function
> > bodies or any code block? I think it would be really useful for avoid
> > namespace polution, specially in unittests (it's really ugly to import
> > things a module will never use except for unittesting).
> 
> When I started using D I thought this was pretty ugly too, but in
> retrospect I can't see any problem at all any more. Specifically,
> importing a module merely brings its symbols into view, it does *not*
> result in some magical linking of code from that module or anything
> else.

I know, but it makes the compiler process all the extra files, which takes
time. I know the compiler is prety fast so it's not that bad, but it's
still not necessary to import symbols I wont use.

> In other words, I no longer see any reason why I'd *want* to
> import from within a unittest{} block, other than for locality and
> perhaps a slight increase in self descriptiveness.

And that are 2 good reasons too by thierselves.

> The namespace pollution argument is not compelling: you are going to
> run into symbol name conflicts when running your unit tests,
> regardless of the import being inside the block or not.

But you don't polute the "real" code, which makes it simpler and more
readable.

> This is the
> only thing I can see wrong with "pollution". The other "problem",
> accidentally using a function you probably desired anyway from inside
> real code, just saves a little typing. And since you are writing unit
> tests you would have probably caught the other case of using the wrong
> function.. :)
> 
> I'd love to hear from more experienced D'ers about problems I haven't
> considered, but since I am yet to see any kind of name conflict in my
> code (4 months on), I'm not really interested in the pollution
> argument. It's a corner case (IMHO) not worthy of the syntax change.

I agree is not a *big* problem, but I think you agree that *is* a problem.
Since at first sight seems trivial to fix, I just want to know why it's
not fixed. You just told me what harmless it is, I asked why it's not
fixed, or if there is some issue I can't see at first sight why it can't
be fixed.

-- 
Leandro Lucarella (luca) | Blog colectivo: http://www.mazziblog.com.ar/blog/
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