OpenEuphoria

RE: [RC] Lucius tries to use namespace

• Posted by Matt Lewis <matthewwalkerlewis at yahoo.com> Jun 25, 2003
• 400 views

> From: Al Getz [mailto:Xaxo at aol.com]
> > irvm at ellijay.com wrote:

<snip>

> > To write a program using GTK, I have a choice:
> > 
> > Option 1:
> > I can specifically 'include ... as ..." each individual GTK 
> > control from its own Eu include file. That makes 124 lines
> > of "include ... as"

<snip>

> > Option 2:
> > I could write a wrapper for all these includes, and just 
> > put a single line: 
> > "include wrapper"

<snip>

> > But what happens when I try to access these functions from my main 
> > program (the one which just 'include(s) wrapper') ?
> > I get an error message telling me that:

<snip>

> > So I'll just qualify the function, right? 
> > entry:set_text("Hello World")
> > 
> > Wrong again!
> > entry has not been declared.

<snip>

> > Q: If Eu can pass on the names of included files, as 
> > well as the names of all the globals in those files, why 
> > can't it also pass on the namespace qualifiers given to
> > those files?

> I didnt have that much of a problem when i wrote the WinClass 
> Library, which depends highly on the use of namespaces for
> naming its classes.

I think you missed Irv's point.  The current namespacing issue helps us as
long as we're only concerned about include files one level down, but as has
been discussed recently, leaves a lot to be desired when there are more
levels than that (and there always are!).  In your example, in every file in
which you wanted to use 'SLE:' or 'MLE:' you'd have to write 'include ... as
SLE'.  And do that for *every* class for *every* file.  What would make
sense to me would simply be the ability to access namespaces from within
namespaces:

--file1
global atom x

--file2
global atom x

--file3
include file1 as f1
include file2 as f2

--file4
include file3 as f3

f3:f1:x=1
f3:f2:x=2

I think that this should solve most of the problems that have been discussed
here regarding namespacing problems and libraries (assuming that we all
start using namespaces for all global accesses).  I think it should be
fairly easy for Rob to implement within Euphoria--just expand the scope
checking algorithm to allow chained namespaces (if I get any spare time,
I'll see if I can do this in the Eu source myself--or maybe Karl could try
it? :).  Of course, this amounts to lots of namespace typing, which seems to
beg for Irv's request of block namespace use, though this would probably get
a lot more involved on the implementation side.

Matt Lewis