OpenEuphoria

Re: . or : for namespace?

• Posted by Mike <vulcan at wi??co.nz> May 05, 2008
• 684 views

Hey Jeremy,

Jeremy Cowgar wrote:

-- snip

> Previous arguments were summarized in my post:
> 
> <a
> href="http://www.openeuphoria.org/EUforum/m20221.html">http://www.openeuphoria.org/EUforum/m20221.html</a>
> 
> Now, following up with that there was another, new complaint, against the .
> idea and that was by Mike and Matt agreed. I somewhat agree but would still
> be in favor of the . but, this is just something we need to work through until
> a final decision has been made.
> 
> Their comment was that when the see a : in code that they wrote 6 months or
> 2 years ago that they will know it's a namespace and therefore the function
> is in another location. That they will be able to tell that right away.
> However,
> maybe in 2 years we will have dot'ed sequence access (whatever that will look
> like) and then you will not know without research if greeter.greeting =
> "Hello"
> is assigning a variable name greeting inside of the greeter namespace or if
> greeter is possibly a sequence.
> 
> So, please read my prior post about the complaints against . and then the
> above
> and let's have another round of discussion please. If you are in favor or
> against
> it, please post your comments.
> 
> Let me also point out that we are focusing a lot on the negatives and people
> who bring about points that are negative. There are many who want the . and
> think it's much clearer. Now, in the end we are all working together to make
> Euphoria better for us all. That's the goal, let's keep that in mind.

That's true.

I personally think that . is clearer, that is, until dot notation becomes
available
for sequence access (or even, *structure* access, yeah..) and then we introduce
ambiguities. Forget 2 years, or even 6 months, problems with one's own code will
surface
in mere weeks.

Now, here is an example of how silly it can get:

include file.x as b
sequence a
..

a.b.c

What does this mean? it really means <drum roll>  a . b:c

  !GASP!

If the dot is used for namespaces, sequence access, also using dots, will be
fraught
with such perils.

If there is to be *any* hope of using dot notation generally, I would really
love to
see someone try and explain away the above example.

I am sure there will be people who would prefer to use . as namespace but they
would also
like to use . for sequence access. Insisting on the former will jeopardize the
latter.

or am I mistaken about this?


regards,
Mike