"Jonathan M Davis" <[email protected]> wrote in message news:[email protected]... > On 2011-06-20 17:36, Andrej Mitrovic wrote: >> On 6/21/11, Jonathan M Davis <[email protected]> wrote: >> > That's not necessarily a bug >> >> Maybe the naming of the issue is wrong, but it has to be a bug: >> http://d.puremagic.com/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=6180 >> >> If private symbols are not usable, then creating an object of a >> private class type is a pretty major bug, methinks. > > Oh, yes. That's a bug. But having two symbols which clash where one is > private > and the other public isn't a bug. It may be a design decision which merits > revisiting, but as I understand it, it's a natural consequence of the fact > that access modifiers modify access, not visibility. >
Isn't visibility a form of access? Regardless, I think it's clear that the whole point of a private "access" modifier is to make things *private* and safely encapsulated. The current situation clearly breaks this. And since visibility without access is useless, I don't see any reason to even get into the subtle semantics of "visibility" vs "access" at all.
