[Modules] Name space semantics was: Re: Some of my thoughts

Stephen Pair spair at advantive.com
Fri Aug 17 04:39:06 UTC 2001


> If there is a real problem that Smalltalk's mechanism's cannot 
> address, I will argue for dealing with it in the tools, rather than 
> complicating the semantics of the language.  For example, suppose 
> that it is really essential to load two versions of the same package. 
> Normally, the methods changed in the second version one will just 
> overwrite the similarly named methods from the first, but there might 
> be a switch to stop this.  However, setting this switch would not 
> change the dispatch semantics: it would re-write the source code.  So 
> the two versions of add: would be renamed _v1_add: and _v2_add:, and 
> the module loader would generate a new add: method something like...

I guess I just don't see how this is simpler...to me, it's vastly more
complex.  A properly implemented system could show your selectors as
"_v1_add:" and "_v2_add:" if you wanted.  

- Stephen





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