Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!ucselx!petunia!kestrel.edu!gyro
From: gyro@kestrel.edu (Scott Layson Burson)
Newsgroups: comp.std.c++
Subject: Re: "module" facility for top-level namespace control
Keywords: namespace, module
Message-ID: <1991Apr28.013630.26001@kestrel.edu>
Date: 28 Apr 91 01:36:30 GMT
References: <5143@lupine.NCD.COM> <1358@appli.se> <5281@lupine.NCD.COM>
Distribution: comp.std.c++
Organization: Kestrel Institute, Palo Alto, CA
Lines: 34

In article <5281@lupine.NCD.COM> rfg@NCD.COM (Ron Guilmette) writes:
>In article <1358@appli.se> niklas@appli.se (Niklas Hallqvist) writes:
>>... Should we (the net) try to write a proposal
>>to the ANSI commitee before their june meeting in Lund, Sweden (at
>>least I think that's the case, some of the members will speak at
>>some seminars there, which I'll try to attend).
>
>Sure.  Why not?  I think that the x3j16 committee (and especially the
>libraries working group) would  probably thank us for it.
>
>Let me see if I can get the ball rolling a bit (and see where it goes).
>
> [proposal deleted -- see article 801]

Good Lord, Ron, this is complicated.  Constructors and destructors?
Inheritance?  I was just trying to solve a namespace problem!

I think what we're seeing here is a Whorfian effect.  The so-called
"Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis" (Sapir and Whorf were linguists) suggests
that the *words* one uses to think about something affect the *way* in
which one thinks about it.  You introduced this notation `class static
{ ... }', and then proceeded to try to think about these things as
some funny kind of class.

I don't know what others have been thinking, but this was never what I
had in mind.  All I have wanted is a way to get qualifiers onto names
in source files I have received from someone else.

In fact, after some thought I have pretty much concluded that my
favorite keyword for this construct is `namespace'.  It says exactly
what it means (unlike, alas, some others in this language).

-- Scott
Gyro@Reasoning.COM