Thoughts about modules

[Kirk McDonald]

Derek Parnell wrote:
> On Thu, 29 Jun 2006 14:45:23 -0700, Kirk McDonald wrote:
> 
> 
>>Derek Parnell wrote:
>>
>>>Why is FQN syntax demonstrable better than the current shortcut syntax?
> 
> 
>>...
>>By making it mandatory, we can 
>>always know where any name comes from, whether they are being 
>>fully-qualified, or imported on their own.
>>
>>Now, for something like writefln, which is a well-known name that 
>>everyone will recognize instantly, this is a bit of a burden. You'd have 
>>to type it a whole extra time at the top of the file! 
> 
> 
> So to summarize ...
> 
> Mandatory fully qualified names makes it simple for a code reader to know
> in which module a member is located. But because that could be a burden to
> the code writer, the alias (or something similar) can be used to 'register'
> the FQN once in the code and allows the writer to use a short form of the
> name.
> 
> Anyhow, I tried this coding style on Build just now and ended up with
> this...

[snipped some examples...]

> import util.str;        // non-standard string routines.
> alias util.str.SetEnv           SetEnv;
> alias util.str.GetEnv           GetEnv;
> alias util.str.Expand           Expand;
> alias util.str.ExpandEnvVar     ExpandEnvVar;
> alias util.str.ends             ends;
> alias util.str.begins           begins;
> alias util.str.enquote          enquote;
> alias util.str.strip            ustrip;
> alias util.str.stripr           ustripr;
> alias util.str.IsLike           IsLike;
> alias util.str.YesNo            YesNo;
> alias util.str.TranslateEscapes TranslateEscapes;

Note that with the shortcut that Python provides, this beomes the much 
less redundant:

from util.str import SetEnv, GetEnv, Expand, ExpandEnvVar, ends, begins, 
enquote, ustrip, ustripr, IsLike, YesNo, TranslateEscapes;

I don't feel I could endorse this practice unless the language supports 
it like this.

I don't feel this is a really serious issue. :-) "private import" 
provides all the sandboxing I think is needed in the absence of C++ 
namespaces. This is just an orginizational nicety.

-Kirk McDonald