Re: A stupid beginners question about Compile

[Stephen C. Gilardi]

I wonder what the rationale was for making it so namespaces need to be
quoted when using in-ns. They don't need to be quoted when using ns.
For example, I have

(ns com.ociweb.talk (:gen-class)) in one file

and

(in-ns 'com.ociweb.talk) in another.

I guess this is because it's conceivable one might want to use in-ns
with a variable, but that's not the case with ns.

(ns foo
  (:load foo.bar foo.baz foo.quux))

and then of course, the prefix list convenience:

(ns foo
  (:load (foo bar baz quux))

--Steve

That's certainly in the right ballpark. There was some discussion I saw recently of changing "in-ns/require/use/refer" into macros that accept unquoted names for the namespaces they deal with. The need for occasional use with evaluated symbols could be addressed by providing in-ns*, require*, use*, refer* as corresponding functions. I'm in favor of that change. I would also like to see ":load" take symbols (in addition to strings) as arguments especially now that the strings it takes no longer include a suffix. The usual "."->"/" and "-"->"_" translations would apply.

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