Should protection attributes disambiguate?

[Nick Sabalausky]

"Nick Sabalausky" <a at a.a> wrote in message 
news:itoiji$2hsk$1 at digitalmars.com...
> "Peter Alexander" <peter.alexander.au at gmail.com> wrote in message 
> news:itog87$2ed9$1 at digitalmars.com...
>> I'm working on a fix to 
>> http://d.puremagic.com/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=6180
>>
>> Essentially the problem boils down to:
>>
>> - Module A has a private symbol named x
>> - Module B has a public symbol named x
>> - Module C imports A and B and tries to use x unqualified
>>
>> Should the fact that B.x is public and A.x is private disambiguate the 
>> usage in module C to use B.x, or is that still an ambiguous unqualified 
>> usage of variable x that requires manual qualification/disambiguation?
>
> If something's private, it's supposed to be an "internal-only" sort of 
> thing. Private. Outside its own module, it shouldn't even be visibile and 
> it's existence shouldn't have any effect. So I'd say unqualfied use of x 
> inside C should definitely be allowed and resolve to B.x.
>

I'd add that IMO, to do otherwise would break encapsulation (or at least put 
a big ugly dent in it).