OpenEuphoria

Re: Universal Namespace Clearinghouse

• Posted by Irv Mullins <irvm at ellijay.com> Jun 22, 2001
• 352 views

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <president at insight-concepts.com>

Subject: Re: Universal Namespace Clearinghouse

<You say this with tongue firmly planted in cheek, I trust?>

I did not understand your comment............Can explain?

Surely you are joking - I certainly was. A "clearinghouse" 
won't work. The idea just barely works in a large COBOL 
shop where people are well-paid to cooperate, and the compiler 
enforces those sorts of things. There's exactly zero chance of it working
in the real world. Besides, as explained in my earlier post, 
and Travis alluded to also, having namespaces fixed into 
include files just delays the inevitable.

Suppose I create an include file which is useful, and everybody 
wants to use it. I create it as namespace 'win', and send it to RDS. 
Maybe I shroud it first. It automatically conflicts with 
Win32Lib, and there isn't any way to change my code. 

No one is going to change Win32Lib's namespace, 
because then all programs that depend upon that will break.

Even if you were willing and able to change the namespace of my 
library, how would  you know that doing so wouldn't 
break all other libraries and programs that might depend upon it?
Including programs you wrote yesterday, before you modified 
the namespace? 

See the problem? We'd be right back where we started.
The only workable solution is to name the space at the 
time it is imported, with a name that would be meaningful only within the 
scope of that one file. If other files also import the same library, they 
are free to rename it however they wish, and there will be no conflicts.

Regards,
Irv