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
Message-ID: <1991Apr30.202357.13791@kestrel.edu>
Date: 30 Apr 91 20:23:57 GMT
References: <1991Apr25.060721.12694@alias.com> <RAEBURN.91Apr26165646@watch.mit.edu> <1991Apr29.174033.29627@alias.com>
Distribution: comp.std.c++
Organization: Kestrel Institute, Palo Alto, CA
Lines: 24

In article <1991Apr29.174033.29627@alias.com> rae@alias.com (Reid Ellis) writes:
>Why don't we simply use a syntax which already evokes this concept --
>using "extern"?
>
>I don't know if another keyword after the extern is necessary, or
>simply the name of the enclosing scope.  Something like the following?
>
>extern NIH {
>#include <NIHCL.h>
>};

My first reaction was Hey, this is pretty good, but look what it would
mean: the rule would have to be that *if* the name following `extern'
were not defined as a type, which is what would normally appear in
that position, *then* treat it as a namespace.  Then someone who
misspelled a type name following `extern' wouldn't find out about it
until link time, and rather indirectly at that.

Besides, the namespace construct *doesn't* mean that the stuff between
the braces is `extern'.  So I would still prefer the keyword
`namespace'.

-- Scott
Gyro@Reasoning.COM