Discussion about namespaces
shalabhc opened this issue · comments
Does include do a text inclusion and is there only one global namespace for all function names? Is there a way to namespace the functions and types? If not, is there a plan to add these?
Yes, it is mostly text inclusion, and there are no namespaces. Lobster has grown from a much simpler language, and it just never happened, but it should.
There is the private keyword which removes a function/struct/variable from the global namespace, and makes it only available to the current file. This was I guess the simplest thing to make things workable without namespaces :)
builtin functions tend to use explicit identifier namespacing, e.g. gl_.
Haven't spent much time thinking what namespaces should look like if they are added. Not a fan of :: since it is "loud", or "." since it makes it look the same as dereferencing. I like _, but that clashes with its existing use in identifiers.
I guess include/gui.lobster is a good example of how currently a library is written with an explicit namespace and private. It be easy to add a namespace gui declaration that would achieve the same thing without having to explicitly prepend gui_ to all public functions in that file. Or it could use something other than ., but that would require changes in all users.
Lobster has namespaces nowadays :) See namespace in http://aardappel.github.io/lobster/language_reference.html