Simon Peyton-Jones wrote:
1) Qualified names:
import A.B.C( T1 ) from "foo"
import A.B.C( T2 ) from "bar"
type S = A.B.C.T1 -> A.B.C.T2
I'd suggest that the above should give a compiler error that A.B.C is
ambiguous (as a qualifier), rather than allowing T1 to disambiguate
it, because otherwise it allows people to write code that could be
very hard to understand ie within the code, every occurrence of
A.B.C as a qualifier should refer to the same module. (Otherwise the
thing qualified qualifies the qualifier that's qualifying it...)
But that's inconsistent with Haskell 98. In H98 you can say
import M( T1 ) as Q
import N( T2 ) as Q
type S = Q.T1 -> Q.T2
and it'll work just fine. You may think it should not work, but
that's water under the bridge. We should be consistent here.
But Q is an alias not a concrete module name like A.B.C so this is not quite
the same thing imho. Q could be regarded as a new local module which
contains T1 from M and T2 from N, so Q.T1 and Q.T2 both use the "same" Q.
However to allow A.B.C.T1 and A.B.C.T2 is to assert that A.B.C is somehow
semantically the "same" entity in both cases even though it is just pure
happenstance that these modules have the same name in their respective
packages. Still I can see it may be useful to regard A.B.C now as a kind of
alias as well and within that view consistency with H98 is obviously
important. So I think we are free to make a choice about this, but
personally I don't know which one is "best".
In my spec, if you omit the package name you get an "old-style"
import using the shared namespace, and if you supply a package name
you get a "new-style" import that only searches in the specified
package:
import A.B.C -- search home + exposed as is done at the moment
import "" A.B.C -- search home package only
import "pkg" A.B.C -- search "pkg" only
That's exactly what our spec says too. (Good news, again.) Only
maybe not explicitly enough! See the section "Is the from<package>
compulsory". Perhaps you could improve the wording to make it more
unambiguous?
I think it's now explicit enough in the latest version of the wiki - I must
have replied to your email before re-reading this section. The only comment
I'd make is that "this" or "home" encroaches on the package namespace so I'd
prefer "" or a keyword or perhaps a choice of either "" or a keyword just as
we can use otherwise in place of True in the guard syntax.
Indeed, if we've converged, would you like to fold into our draft
whatever you think is useful from yours?
Apart from the meaning of A.B.C.id which I don't have a strong view about
(since I always use aliases anyway) but which other people may also want to
comment on, both proposals have converged modulo syntax. Therefore it seems
best to just leave them as they are unless you want to use my suggested
syntax instead.
Regards, Brian.
--
Logic empowers us and Love gives us purpose.
Yet still phantoms restless for eras long past,
congealed in the present in unthought forms,
strive mightily unseen to destroy us.
http://www.metamilk.com
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