On 1/20/07, John Cowan <cowan_at_ccil.org> wrote:
>
> Report section 6.1 provides a facility for renaming identifiers on export
> from a library, but no explanation is given for it. The need to rename
> identifiers on import is plain, as they may need to change to avoid
> conflicts with other imported or local identifiers. At export time,
> however, such conflicts are not known.
>
> Having two different "native" identifiers in a library is overkill. It is
> the very simplest of refactorings to globally change all the instances
> of identifiers in a given module, and that ought to be sufficient.
> Either remove the facility or give a strong justification for it, please.
First, I do not see that the R6RS standard should enforce a particular
naming convention on programmers. If a programmer needs to import and
export the same name (but not with the same value), currently they
have choices. They can import NAME as original-NAME, then define NAME
and export it as NAME. Or they can import NAME as NAME, then define
modified-NAME and export it as NAME. For clarity, they could even
import NAME as original-NAME, then define modified-NAME and export it
as NAME. I see no reason to force all programmers to use the first
convention.
Second, renaming on export allows programmers to export a single value
with two different names. Programmers could work around this by
writing (define NAME2 NAME1), but again I see no reason this should be
necessary.
--
Carl Eastlund
Received on Mon Jan 22 2007 - 13:30:05 UTC