On Fri, 2004-12-17 at 14:26 +0000, Duncan Coutts wrote:
All,
So here's the problem: we have a binding to a large foreign library (GTK) which we are trying to fit nicely into hierarchical module name space. It would live under
Graphics.UI.Gtk Graphics.UI.Gtk.Button Graphics.UI.Gtk.Frame ... etc
Now there are over 100 modules directly under Graphics.UI.Gtk and you don't want to have to import each one of them separately. Of course you will not use all of them in one module but you might reasonably use 20+ of them.
So it'd be nice to be able to say:
[snip] Or as an alternative to exporting qualified names as I proposed before (ie Graphics.UI.Gtk exports the qualified name "Button.label") how about this: import qualified Graphics.UI.Gtk.* which just means import every module under Graphics.UI.Gtk qualified with it's module name so that then you could reference: Button.label A downside to such a scheme is that it might make it too easy to import internal modules or modules that are not supposed to be used together. I think on balance I prefer putting the power in the hands of the library author by letting modules export other modules' contents qualified with the module name module Graphics.UI.Gtk ( qualified module Graphics.UI.Gtk.Button as Button, ... Any other ideas of how to wrap large existing name spaces? The .Net and Java people would have the same problem: to use nice qualified names under the current module system, users would have to import 100's of modules. Duncan