0004961: module rename X = Y.

Notes
(0005230) yziquel (reporter) 2010-01-19 18:44 edited on: 2010-01-19 18:46	Perhaps an "open X as Y" syntax would be more convenient. In the same spirit, it would be nice to have the following code being valid type t module X = struct type t let f : t -> .t = blah blah blah... end where .t would represent the type t outside of X, i.e. the first 'type t' declaration.

(0005253) goswin (reporter) 2010-02-26 21:58	If you have 2 modules with the same name then it already is unclear, at least to the casual reader, which of the two you are refering too. As to the suggestion of "open X as Y" that would still leave X (both of them) in the namespace. At least I would expect that. So I would expect X.foo and Y.foo to now be the same. The shadowed other X would still be unaccessable. The "rename X as Y" would make it clearer that it removes X from the namespace and X.foo would be invalid or not Y.foo. I feel that "open X as Y" can be written as "module Y = X". And for your type shadowing problem you can use the following (confusing) syntax: # module X = struct type parent_t = t type t let f : t -> parent_t = fun t -> Obj.magic 0 end;; module X : sig type parent_t = t type t val f : t -> parent_t end MfG Goswin

(0005254) yziquel (reporter) 2010-02-28 16:49	I really want one module name to disappear. Suppose you've got two modules A and B.A. What I want is to write rename A as C open B so that you have module C (the former A module) and module A (the former B.A) module. More generally, it is somewhat surprising that modules, which are rather semantic in nature, are so tightly coupled with their names, which is a syntactic concept. I am not saying that the approach I proposed is the right one, but it would be nice to be able to have a more efficient way to manage module name clashes in OCaml. As for the second problem, of type shadowing, the problem is indeed that you can only deal with this rather natural problem by using a confusing syntax. The code proposed by Goswin would look terrible in a .mli file with ocamldoc called upon it. Hence my suggestion of .t for the type in the parent module.

(0005255) goswin (reporter) 2010-03-01 13:08	As long as the initial module names are distinct you can rename them to your liking. The original name won't disapear but that doesn't matter if you do it in the right order. module C = A module A = B.A (* or open B in this case *) In other cases you might have to create a dummy name first to get the order right. module T123 = A module A = B module B = T123 An actual rename you would only need when you have for example a module named Buffer and now you want to access the stdlibs Buffer. Or rather when someone else duplicates a module name and you have to work with that code. MfG Goswin

Issue History
Date Modified	Username	Field	Change
2010-01-15 12:22	yziquel	New Issue
2010-01-19 18:44	yziquel	Note Added: 0005230
2010-01-19 18:46	yziquel	Note Edited: 0005230
2010-02-26 21:58	goswin	Note Added: 0005253
2010-02-28 16:49	yziquel	Note Added: 0005254
2010-03-01 13:08	goswin	Note Added: 0005255
2011-06-01 16:43	doligez	Status	new => acknowledged

Relationships