[fpc-pascal] How to avoid namespace name clashes after USES ?

Marcos Douglas md at delfire.net
Wed Aug 22 16:12:05 CEST 2012


On Wed, Aug 22, 2012 at 3:57 AM, Marco van de Voort <marcov at stack.nl> wrote:
> In our previous episode, Marcos Douglas said:
>> Yes, we know too... but how prevent this using third-party libs?
>> For example, what do you think if I have a project that have a file
>> called lnet.pas? Can I use this identifier?
>
> As much as any identifier. If you uses lnet; in the same unit where you
> import an unit with lnet symbol, you have to qualify it fully.

I said identifier, but I mean FILE and, in that case, I can't use it.

>> can't because the lnet project already uses, right? But I didn't know
>> before...ohh my... and now, I can't use this project because I will
>> got a compiler error because "cant have two units with the same name".
>> Do you think this is right?
>> Because of this conflict that I proposed the syntax:
>>  uses
>>    foounit as f1 in '/path_1/foounit.pas',
>>    foounit as f2 in '/path_2/foounit.pas';
>
> That only fixed it for that compilation unit,
> if another unit just "uses foounit" that leads to an inconsistent state.

First, this is an idea, so should be improved.
Second, this is a problem of programmer; if he forget, sorry for him.
Third, maybe this sintaxe should be used just on project (not unit)
and in units only use the alias (f1 and f2 in that case).

>> > Requiring all functions to be allways fully qualified will make the
>> > most commom case worse than current implementation just to be better
>> > for the uncommon case. This is a step back, not forward...
>
>> Timothy Madden want this, not me. ;-)
>
> I have experience with it, and it is a nice feature if it is not mandatory.
> So you don't _have_ to qualify.
>
> If you know that a certain unit contains a lot of fairly common symbol names
> you import it qualified. (like many large API units, typically you only uses
> an handfull symbols from e.g. Windows, and it is not mandatory for the
> other situations).
>
> Modula2 went a step to far to only allow unqualified use if you name the
> symbols. That is too laboursome. Simply unqualified (what we have now) and
> qualified would go a long way.
>
> ... and all its effects and sideeffects are known.

I agree.

Marcos Douglas



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