TITLE: Name space management proposal


PROBLEM: akkana@moab.wpd.sgi.com (Akkana Peck)

Argh!  Why does everybody and his brother who produces a class library
insist on including a class called "String"?  

It makes for a developers'
nightmare -- when I say
	String s;
there's no definite way of knowing whether the compiler thinks I mean
the X11 String typedef, the AT&T String, the codelibs String, some
locally-written String class, the Booch String (assuming it's in fact
called String, like all the others mentioned above), etc.  If you're
unfortunate enough to work on a project which uses two or more of the
above libraries, good luck keeping all the Strings straight!

Is namespace pollution no longer considered harmful?  Most of the style
guides I see still warn the programmer against this sort of thing, but
apparently developers of software tools consider themselves to be above
such warnings (or want to discourage use of anyone else's tools?)

Please, people, if you're developing components you want other people to
use, don't use common names like String -- at least prefix them with
a few letters, e.g. AttString!


RESPONSE: maxtal@extro.ucc.su.OZ.AU (John MAX Skaller), 10 Feb 93

	Because its the most useful class to have. And there's
no standard one. So we keep reinventing the String.

	My library uses 'string' (lower case 's' :-)

	There's a proposal by Bjarne Stroustrup to 
add Namespace control to C++ that will alleviate this problem. 
Roughly

	namespace MAXTAL_FANTASTIC_LIBRARY_VERSION1 {
		class string { ... }
		... 
	}
	namespace maxtal = MAXTAL_FANTASTIC_LIBARY_VERSION1;

	namespace YOUR_WONDERFUL_LIBRARY {
		class string { .. }
	}
	namespace YWL = YOUR_WONDERFUL_LIBRARY;

	using namespace YWL;
	string s; // yours
	maxtal::string t; // mine

There's a good chance this proposal, or something similar
will eventually find its way into the standard (IMHO).