Re: Ada name space (was: Re: good software engineering)

[netnews!schonberg!dewar@nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)]

One of the problems in choosing names for Ada packages that are to be shared
is that the naming style that one wants is indeed very different depending
on whether or not you expect to use qualification.

The most sensible thing would be for each portable package to simply specify
whether or not it was intended to be used with "use" clauses or not.

The trouble is that if you design a package with names chosen to be appropriate
if the package is used, then when people import it into an environment where,
for whatever reasons, the use of use is restricted, they end up with horrible
names.

One can of course decide that all portable packages should have names designed
for fully qualified use, but you have to remember that a lot of Ada programmers
prefer *not* to use fully qualified names all the time.

I don't intend to start a futile flame war as to whether one should or not
make use of use clauses, or insist on full qualification. This has been 
discussed to death. The bottom line is that there are really two schools
of thought, and the real world contains people with both points of view
(I dislike the fully qualified style, but I quite understand that there
are many Ada programmers who prefer it, and I am not about to argue that
they should change -- anti-use people should show the same curtesy in the
other direction!)

So we are left with trying to compromise between the two viewpoints. Certainly
I think most people dislike thinks like:

	Posix.Posix_Exceptions



Robert Dewar