From: dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)
Subject: Re: Enumeration literal visibility and use type
Date: 1998/05/27
Date: 1998-05-27T00:00:00+00:00 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <dewar.896294335@merv> (raw)
In-Reply-To: 6kgh82$92n@gcsin3.geccs.gecm.com
John McCabe says
<<And explicit module qualifiers on enumeration literals don't?
>>
If you think that explicit module qualifiers on identifiers are ugly, then
you definitely want to consider using a real "use" package clause.
Basically what is going on with use type is that there are a significant
number of people who don't mind writing, or even prefer to write:
package_name.identifier;
and of course enumeration literals are just a special case of identifiers.
But they draw the line at
package_name."+" (x,y);
Basically the issue here is that people want to know the package where
something comes from at a glance, and hence don't like use package clauses,
but their desire to see the package where something comes from at a glance
is not strong enough to overcome their disgust at having to go to the ugly
prefix notation for binary operators. It's just a matter of trading off
syntactic ugliness vs explicit qualification.
I always have trouble understanding this distinction, but I *SURELY* cannot
understand that someone would not mind writing:
x := red;
where red is an enuemration literal, but would not want to write
x := colorget;
where colorget is some other function than an enumeration literal. To
want to qualify in the second case:
x := pkg.colorget;
but to object to
x := pkg.red;
seems very inconsistent to me. I do understand the use type argument, but
surely to make it apply to enumeration literals and not other primitive
operations would be very odd indeed.
next prev parent reply other threads:[~1998-05-27 0:00 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 28+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
[not found] <6kej65$dnh$1@hermes.seas.smu.edu| <6kejt5$75u@gcsin3.geccs.gecm.com>
1998-05-26 0:00 ` Enumeration literal visibility and use type William Bralick
1998-05-26 0:00 ` Fergus Henderson
1998-05-27 0:00 ` John McCabe
1998-05-27 0:00 ` Peter Amey
1998-05-27 0:00 ` John McCabe
1998-05-27 0:00 ` Robert Dewar [this message]
1998-05-28 0:00 ` John McCabe
1998-05-28 0:00 ` Thomas Hood
1998-05-28 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1998-05-28 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1998-05-29 0:00 ` John McCabe
1998-05-27 0:00 ` William Bralick
1998-05-26 0:00 William Bralick
1998-05-26 0:00 ` Matthew Heaney
1998-05-27 0:00 ` William Bralick
1998-05-27 0:00 ` Mats Weber
1998-05-27 0:00 ` John McCabe
1998-05-26 0:00 ` John McCabe
1998-05-26 0:00 ` David C. Hoos, Sr.
1998-05-26 0:00 ` Ray Blaak
1998-05-27 0:00 ` John McCabe
1998-05-27 0:00 ` John McCabe
1998-05-26 0:00 ` John English
1998-05-26 0:00 ` Matthew Heaney
1998-05-27 0:00 ` John McCabe
1998-05-27 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1998-05-27 0:00 ` Matthew Heaney
1998-05-26 0:00 ` Roger Racine
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