Review of Jose Armando Garcia Sancio's std.log

[Jose Armando Garcia]

On Mon, Mar 5, 2012 at 5:30 PM, Steven Schveighoffer
<schveiguy at yahoo.com> wrote:
> On Mon, 05 Mar 2012 20:22:05 -0500, so <so at so.so> wrote:
>
>> On Monday, 5 March 2012 at 23:51:29 UTC, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
>>>
>>> On Mon, 05 Mar 2012 18:30:03 -0500, David Nadlinger <see at klickverbot.at>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Monday, 5 March 2012 at 21:55:08 UTC, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> The log aliases use names that are too common.  I think log.info is a
>>>>> better symbol for logging than just 'info', which could be a symbol in a
>>>>> myriad of places.  Given that D's symbol lookup rules allow shadowing of
>>>>> global symbols, this does not work out very well.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Originally, the code used log!info and so on, but it was changed to the
>>>> current design right after review begin, the rationale being that you could
>>>> always use »import log = std.log« if you want the extra namespace.
>>>
>>>
>>> That doesn't help.  Software isn't static.
>>>
>>> import std.log;
>>> import other; // defines B
>>>
>>> class A : B
>>> {
>>>   void foo()
>>>   {
>>>      info("some info message"); // error! int isn't a function!
>>>   }
>>> }
>>>
>>> other.d:
>>>
>>> class B
>>> {
>>>   int info; // added later
>>> }
>>
>>
>> That is not a counter-argument to something related to this library but
>> everything that lies in global namespace.
>> At its first state both severity levels and the "log" was in global
>> namespace. Now only severity levels.
>>
>> You are also overlooking one crucial fact that this library will be part
>> of phobos, standard library. Which requires everyone to adopt. When you see
>> codes like this (below), you don't blame standard library designers do you?
>>
>> using namespace std;
>> int cout;
>
>
> Except 'info', 'error', 'warning' are all common names, likely to be a very
> attractive name for something that has nothing to do with (or cares about)
> logging.  cout is not a common name or even an english word, so it's
> unlikely someone has or wants to create a cout member.
>
Actually, I see this more as argument as to why cout is a horrible
name for a symbol in std.stdio. I suspect that the only reason that it
is there is to keep C developer migrating to D happy. It should
probably just be "out" like Java (System.out) and C# (Console.Out).

> Couple this with the fact that all of these are nouns -- likely candidates
> for fields.
>
> Your argument has some merit, but I would add that my argument is only
> against *common* global namespace names.
>
> Another solution besides using a namespace is to make the names less common,
> like linfo instead of just info.
>
> -Steve