Library standardization

[Sean Kelly]

== Quote from Robert Fraser (fraserofthenight at gmail.com)'s article
> Sean Kelly wrote:
> > Oh, I see what you mean.  I suppose one could argue that package methods are
> > effectively static, but it still seems a bit weird to me.  Can they access instance
> > variables?
> >
> Yes, of course. What's your argument for "effectively static"? "package"
> is just a protection attribute, just like "public", "private", and
> "protected"; I don't see the static-ness involved at all.
> Maybe "package" means something different in another language? I'm just
> coming from a Java background where package-protection is the default &
> quite common.

Yeah, I was just being dumb.  I think the reasoning is that, because 'package' is
simply a slightly looser 'private' then it should follow the same rules.  I think
this could be argued either way, but it does make some sense.  I don't suppose
it's possible to implement a protected interface?

    package interface I {
        void fn();
    }

    class C : package I {
        package void fn() {}
    }

I'd like to believe that this would work, but it's hard to say.  The other options
I can think of would be some variation of the above--ie. providing an interface
for package-level operations.  I've done this sort of thing in C++ before to get
around the "friends have access to everything" issue.


Sean