Small troubles with "private"

[bearophile]

Meta:

> Would the package access specifier work for this, as long as 
> you keep it in the same package?

It's the opposite problem, I'd like to detect where I am using 
private names by mistake, and the compiler doesn't complain 
because it's in the same module.


> I've seen Jacob Carlborg suggest that unittests should be put 
> in a separate module before, maybe this is an argument for 
> that, even in smaller projects.

Putting the unittests very close to their functions/methods is 
very good, for various reasons. I even sometimes write functions 
like this:

void foo() {
     ...
} unittest {
     ...
}


> I think this would be confusing for people coming from Java, 
> C#, and C++ as well,

People coming from Java/C# are able to learn it well, but newbies 
that don't know about private attributes will have troubles, 
because to learn something new you usually prefer/need a strict 
teacher (or strict compiler).


> Programmers would have to consider yet another access specifier 
> when adding struct/class variables. It seems like unnecessary 
> mental overhead for something that can be avoided fairly easily.

In the main D newsgroup some people were recently discussing 
about a new access specifier, to be used by reference data 
"owned" by a class/struct :-)

Bye,
bearophile