Xah Lee wrote:
Of languages that do have namespace that i [sic] have at least working expertise: Mathematica, Perl, Python, Java. Knowing these langs sufficiently well, i [sic] do not see anything special about namespace. The _essence_ of namespace is that a char is choosen as a separator, and the compiler just use this char to split/connect identifiers.
That is hardly the essence of namespaces, just a notational convenience to help humans relate to namespaces. The essence of namespaces is that they are distinct.
It's also not an accurate statement. XML namespaces, for example, use many characters as separators, not just one, but that's not the essence. The essence is that all the characters matter, not just the putative separators.
Although i [sic] have close to zero knowledge about compiler or parser, but from a math point of view and my own 18 years of programing experience, i [sic] cannot fathom what could possibly be difficult of introducing or implementing a namespace mechanism into a language. I do not understand, why so many languages that lacks so much needed
Point not proven. If they were really needed in every language, every language would have them.
namespace for so long? If it is a social problem, i [sic] don't imagine they would last so long. It must be some technical issue?
Yeah, like technically they aren't needed everywhere.
Could any compiler expert give some explanation?
Compilers are not relevant. XML has namespaces, and compilers certainly aren't the issue there.
-- Lew -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
