Re: What if...

[Eric Kidd <eric.kidd@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, 2002-08-12 at 07:44, Jonathan Hseu wrote:
> Cool.  But... what if I want to (use/export/mangle)?
> I guess I could put an extra (use/export) at the end of the file, but
> perhaps a better solution is necessary.
> 
> It also becomes a bigger issue when we get selective imports.
> For instance:
> (use/pick tests/blah $pi)
> 
> But what if we wanted to use/pick/mangle/export?

Hello!  I'm the guy who first implemented (export ...) and (use ...) in
Proto.

My original intention was add extra clauses to (use ...), similar to
those in Dylan:

(use foo/bar
  (rename f1 bar-f1)
  (exclude f2))

(use foo/bar
  (prefix foo-bar-))

(use foo/bar
  (export f1 (rename f2 foo-bar-f2) f3))

(export
   g1
   (rename internal-g2 g2)
   g3)

...and so on.  This keeps the entire import/export sytax in just two
special forms, each of which implements a "little language".  And it
saves you the trouble of implementing 20 redundant (use/export/mangle
...) forms.  Dylan actually does a pretty good job with selective
importing, name mangling and exporting.  I don't like introducing
special forms with "/" in the name unless absolutely necessary--it seems
to be "code smell" indicating that I haven't found the right abstraction
to cover two special cases.

Anyway, that's just my two cents... :-)

Cheers,
Eric