A little namespace "proposal"

Lothar Schenk lothar.schenk at gmx.de
Wed Apr 7 13:33:43 UTC 2004


Chris Muller wrote:

> If I'm using a Plot package written by Diego in my program and that's the
> only one I like and use, then great.  BUT, if another Plot package becomes
> available (with names that conflict with Diego's) that supports 3D-plots
> and I want to use it also, then I want a way to *dynamically* "make room"
> in the namespace for both to exist.  So "Plot" becomes "DiegoPlot" or
> something of my choosing so that "Plot" from the 3D package can be defined.

> Thoughts?

I used to think that there's a concept called Polymorphism that's supposed to 
make such things easy.

Yes, I understand that the concept is commonly only used with regard to 
methods, but maybe that point of view is simply too restrictive. Isn't the 
observation that we can have methods in different classes bear the same name 
indicative of the fact that we already have a namespace mechanism in 
Smalltalk? Maybe we should ask what could be the natural extension of that 
mechanism to other named entities in a Smalltalk system.

Regards, Lothar



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