Import concerns revisited

[Walter Bright]

Sean Kelly wrote:
> Walter Bright wrote:
>>
>> I certainly agree with that. What I am unconvinced of, however, is 
>> that the *renaming* is central or critical. Note that C, C++, Java, 
>> C#, Ruby, etc., do not support renaming. Only Python seems to. And 
>> only D has a general purpose renaming capability.
> 
> It's a valid point.  However, C++ supports namespaces and 'using' as a 
> means of arbitrarily manipulating scope signifiers and providing short 
> prefixes if the supplied one is too long (though it typically isn't, 
> since C++ does not have a 1-1 mapping between file name/location and 
> FQN).  And C is simply too antiquated/low-level to consider.  I'm not 
> aware of how Java or C# operate in this context however.  I don't 
> suppose anyone with more experience could comment?

A correction to my post: C++ does have namespace-alias-definitions, 
where a namespace name can be aliased.