Re: Namespaces?
Shawn Pringle wrote:
>
> There are lots of potential problems with modifying the interpreter,
> one could introduce undefined behavior or some bugs into the interpreter
> itself.
>
On the dev list we have exchanged over 130 emails thus far amongst the
developers talking about any impact. We are still working on the final changes if
any.
> I know some of the keywords will improve the experience of EUPHORIA but
> changing namespace behavior so that you can use builtin names without
> overriding must be too difficult for those who are getting into the
> interpreter guts to do or we would have seen it already. :)
>
It's actually already done. Matt changed ~8 lines of code to make this work.
> I would like to point out that you can use namespaces without overriding
> builtins. Sure connecting to an ftp site is abstractly similiar to opening
> a file but you can use the function name 'connnect' instead. Consider these
> psuedocode
>
First, the technically correct term for ftp is not connect, it is open(). Even
in your FTP client, you type ftp> open ftp.gnu.org. So, due to limitations in
Euphoria's namespacing you are suggesting we cannot wrap a library correctly, we
must alter correct names to incorrect names due to Euphoria's limitations.
Secondly, there are all sorts of other examples such as sqlite:open (again you
*are* opening a file, not connecting to a file or connecting to a database
server), zip:open(), stream:open(), etc...
Secondly, the whole idea of allowing the overriding w/o replacing built-ins is
summed up pretty well by a post by Derek. It deals with creative naming as you
are suggesting:
"I want to locate a certain letter in a line of text, so do I use 'search',
'find', 'locate', 'match', 'inquire', 'whereis', 'scan', 'lookup', 'index', ... ?
Even today, how many people continue to confuse the usage of the built-in
functions 'find' and 'match'?"
> These identifiers you can use over and over again in some
> ftp.e, http.e, map.e etc.:
>
As was discussed on the mailing list, what we do in the standard library is
going to be mimiced by Euphoria programmers for a long time to come. Creative
naming is what they will see.
> type kind( object x )
> -- verifies that x is the type that would be returned by connect() or new().
>
> function connect( UnicodeString resource_string, sequence data_sequence )
> -- connect to some resource that already exists.
> procedure disconnect( object connectionhandle )
> -- disconnect to a resource.
>
> function new( sequence data )
> -- create a new instance of something.
>
> function set( object x, object key, object y ) -- Sets x of key, key, to y.
> -- As in a map class.
>
> function get( object x, object key )
>
> function exists( object x, object key )
>
> Okay, none of these use reserved names and they are short you use namespaces
> with them all. There is no need to modify how EUPHORIA does namespacing
> because they do not use any names from the builtins.
>
You have given an example of something very easy. Please try something like
ftp.e, stream.e, zip.e, regexp.e.
> include get.e as get
> include ftp.e as ftp
> include http.e as http
> -- everyone is happy. Right?
>
I do not see where it solves anything, sorry.
--
Jeremy Cowgar
http://jeremy.cowgar.com
|
Not Categorized, Please Help
|
|
