Importing again

[Chris Miller]

Here's my thoughts on import that should satisfy most of what's being  
discussed:

1) Some people say "make things inconsistent and have import private by  
default" or similar. I say, look at it from a different angle: change what  
import really does! Instead of import pulling in all the symbols, allowing  
other code to access those symbols through the importing scope, just make  
it so it only makes available the symbols to the importing scope, and not  
allowing other code to access those symbols through the importing scope.  
In effect, it would be like the current private import but would not even  
expose these private symbols outside the module. Most modules would use  
this style; current use of "private import" would become "import".

2) To achieve what the current "public import" does, "mixin import" could  
be used. all.d files would use this style.

3) To achieve what proposed "import foo as bar" does, just import inside a  
struct; this can even be done right now!
    struct io { import std.stdio; }   io.writefln("hi");
Note: if (1) and (2) are implemented, "mixin import" would probably be  
needed in the struct.

4) To selectively import single things from modules, I'd just vote for  
using the fully-qualified name in an import:
    import std.stdio.writefln; // Only import writefln from std.stdio.