One last shot at Namespace and Structure
I have spent the last several days reading everything that I could find on
namespace and structure since January 1, 1998. There is a huge amount of
quite thoughtful information in that span, and I am sure that Rob has taken
note of it, but I think that some of it has become so theoretical that it
would be difficult to decide what is important.
My basic wish is for this:
A. Some means(can't use method here...might confuse) that will allow me to
read one of the thousands of files in this world with fixed length records
and fields, make changes and write it back out to a new file.
1. I don't care if it takes objects or classes or structures, but I want
to be able to use the same basic template(read here include) for the input
and output files( because I probably will do it over and over again and the
files are structurally identical).
2. I want to be able to refer to the fields in the input and output
records by name without using screwy numbered constants and without having
to play strange games to separate the input fields from the output fields.
3. I would really like to be able to dynamically attach a name to any
element in a sequence and have it usable from that point. But I will live
without this one.
B. I want to be able to use as many different libraries as I need without
having to look at anything but their documentation(knowing that in some
cases, I may not be able to look inside them anyway).
1. Whatever rules for precluding colliding includes are necessary, let us
enforce them in the interpreter...not depend on the good will and skills of
programmers at various levels of experience, however well intentioned.
2. If they are to be allowed to overlap intentionally, then give us
precedence rules(I think we have most of these, already).
3. If we don't want them to overlap, then we should be able to prevent
that at the include level, without acting or editing inside the include.
4. Dynamic includes would be really nice to allow programs to flexibly
adjust themselves to platform or environment or user selection without
contorted methods or including unneeded code to occupy the interpreter.
C. The means to exclude some items from bind so that initialization files
and other such items may be more easily implemented in bound code.
All these items share a logical set of functions except for the last and
that one comes from the same needs. Those needs are to be able to handle
data from external sources quickly and easily and to program arbitrarily
complex and large code sequences in as modular a manner as possible.
However these items are accomplished, I will be happy. Of course, timely
fulfilment wouldn't hurt my feelings :)
Everett L.(Rett) Williams
rett at gvtc.com
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