import concerns (was Re: Historical language survey)

[Sean Kelly]

Sean Kelly wrote:
> Walter Bright wrote:
>> Derek Parnell wrote:
>>> On Sat, 08 Jul 2006 06:56:47 +1000, Walter Bright 
>>> <newshound at digitalmars.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> The alias works at any level you choose to make it. Alias can be 
>>>> used to 'import' any name into the current namespace, making it 
>>>> first class.
>>>
>>> Even names that are declared 'private' in the imported module? Is 
>>> that how you want it to work Walter? If so, why do we bother with 
>>> 'private'? What's the point?
>>
>> In class scope, access control is done *after* name lookup, not 
>> before. I'm concerned about confusion by reversing the order of that 
>> for module scope.
> 
> In D though, 'private' always implies module visibility, whether it it 
> at module scope or class scope.  If the behavior at module scope is 
> changed, would it affect its behavior at class scope as well?

By the way, if private were changed at both module and class level, 
which I do think makes sense on some levels, this behavior would change:

     module main;

     class C
     {
     private:
         void fn() { printf( "C\n" ); }
     }

     void fn() { printf( "glob\n" ); }

     class D : C
     {
         void go() { fn(); }
     }

     void main()
     {
         D d = new D;
         d.go;
     }

Currently, this prints "C".  But if privates were truly private then I 
would expect it to either print "glob" or to get a compile error that 
two matching function were found and that D's call to 'fn' must be 
qualified by either prefixing it with a '.' or 'C.' to indicate intent.


Sean