Re: How bad would it be to say/enforce that namespacing can only apply to classes and not normal functions?

2008/6/26 Hartmut Holzgraefe <hartmut@mysql.com>: > Richard Quadling wrote: > > How bad would it be to say that namespacing can only apply to classes and >> not normal functions? >> > > i don't see namespacing as an OO only feature, IMHO it is a perfectly > valid and useful thing for pure procedural code, too > > not having namespacing for procedural functions would leave > the old ugly concept of bundling functions as static methods within > dummy wrapper classes as only option for procedural name space > emulation ... which AFAIR was one of the things we wanted to get > rid of way back when the whole namespace idea first materialized? > > Ok. I see your point and the idea of grouping related functionality into a dummy class full of statics does feel wrong when there is no other benefit, but from a userland code's perspective namespace::function() looks JUST like ugly_bundled_class::static() Internally, sure, they are completely different, but from a users perspective, they are the same thing. Same amount of typing. Same syntax. Nothing to differentiate. So the issue to namespace::function() vs class::static() remains. As I see it either precedence is the answer (user namespaces first, internal namespaces next and global namespace being last) or a different symbol for namespace. Maybe namespace:::function() vs class::static(). Would that be enough? Richard. -- ----- Richard Quadling Zend Certified Engineer : http://zend.com/zce.php?c=ZEND002498&r=213474731 "Standing on the shoulders of some very clever giants!"