OpenEuphoria

Re: Euphoria To C Translator - Official Release

• Posted by Jiri Babor <jbabor at PARADISE.NET.NZ> Jun 06, 2001
• 398 views

Dear Robert,

> I intend to work on the namespace issue and
> some other things now ...

Let me tell you - now that you have finally decided to do something
really useful for a change (insert obligatory smilie here) - about a
scheme I am using in one of my private, incredibly slowly moving
projects. I do not think it's anything terribly new - the same or very
similar schemes were probably proposed often enough in the past - but
I like it a lot. It is very simple, it requires just two or three new
words and it does not break any existing code...

To import a file into the current namespace I use this simple
extension of the include statement:

    include  <filename>  as  <label>

For example:

    include  myfont.e  as  font

In the imported file, the elements intended for export (constants,
variables, functions and procedures are marked as such by 'export'
label, the same way as 'global' is used.

For example:

    export integer x, y, z

    export function abc(...)
    ...
    end function

Then, in the 'current' namespace, the common enough dot notation can
be
used to import these elements, e.g.:

    x1 = font.x
    x2 = font.abc(...)
    ...

The beauty of the scheme is, apart from its simplicity, the global
identifiers can still be used in their traditional sense. But, of
course, it would be sensible to restrict their future use to 'system'
items only, things like get(), value(), true, false, etc.

By the way, an embellishment of the form

    using <label>
        ...
    end using

so that the previous example becomes

    using font
        x1 = x
        x2 = abc(...)
        ...
    end using

would also be a nice convenience.

jiri