Once again. I do not want classes/function from ORM lib to clutter my global namespace everywhere. I just want everything from it to be available in couple of files (where lots of SQL/mapping) is going to be used. In those few files I'll be able to keep control of names and avoid conflicts.
Sure, I can prefix all the names or insert a bunch of imports, although it'll just be ugly.
Maybe if you use a really hairy ORM with a real lot of levels with real lot of namespaces on each level which you all need it might be a bit ugly. It's the same in other languages too - Java and Python code is no stranger to a bunch of imports at the start of the file. And BTW if you have such library structure blanket imports won't help you either since you'd have to do a bunch of imports to capture all the levels.
If using a bunch of imports is the only way that is accepted - then at least a shortcut like python's "from x import a,b,c,d,e,f,g,h" would be a nice.
Supporting comma syntax to group imports is probably a good idea, should hurt anything. As for supporting "from X import A, B, C" - I guess this is to mean "import X::A, X::B, X::C" - we need to think about it. Anyway, there's always an option of just using X::A, X::B and X::C - remember, putting things in global space is not a requirement, prefix is OK. What is not OK is a overly long prefix.
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Stanislav Malyshev, Zend Software Architect
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