RE: Namespaces

At 5:30 AM -0500 5/23/97, Martin Bryan wrote:
>At 09:07 22/5/97 -0700, Andrew Layman wrote:
>>Sean Mc Grath points out that the namespace problem recurrs in many
>>modern programming languages, and that these may give clues to a
>>solution.
>>
>>1	The URI-at-the-front method:
>>
>
>>2.	The "Java" method:
>>
>>3.		The "Modula-2" method:
>
>
>The problem with all these methods is scope.

<snip/>

>Therefore what is needed is a way of saying that from this element till you
>find the matching end-tag, consider that a separate name space has been set
>up whereby all tags within this scope can be considered to have
>automagically been qualified by a specified name space qualifier.


This is a good point, but it's not a fatal flaw of the proposals, just a
good feature to add to them. I'm rather dubious about the namespace issue
(as I intend to say later on), but I don't think that scoping is a problem
for any of the proposals other than the high colonic -- and that proposal
simply avoids the problem by requiring full qualification.

   FWIW dynamic scope is definitely useful in some cases, and we should
make sure not to forget to examine techniques and implications of it for
anything we decide.

   -- David

_________________________________________
David Durand              dgd@cs.bu.edu  \  david@dynamicDiagrams.com
Boston University Computer Science        \  Sr. Analyst
http://www.cs.bu.edu/students/grads/dgd/   \  Dynamic Diagrams
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Received on Friday, 23 May 1997 13:54:20 UTC