On Thu, Jul 5, 2012 at 8:11 AM, Frank Shearar <frank.shearar at gmail.com> wrote:

> Right. So what you're saying is that if you want proper modules, you
> need VM support.

Not necessarily. For the next experiment, I've been thinking about
implementing selector spaces. Here's how it might work:

• Each environment has its own Symbol table
• The scanner delegates interning of symbols to the environment
• When interning a symbol the environment searches its imports
• If no imported environment has the symbol, it creates one in its own
symbol table

This would mean that an environment could add extension methods to
classes in other environments, without colliding with other
extensions. It would also make it possible to create "private
overrides" where only code in that environment would use the override.
It might be useful for sandboxing, but might not be sufficient.

I want to stress, though, that this is *not* part of the current
proposal—it's just some ruminating about what the next experiment
might be, someday.

Colin