]> On Sunday, Jul 20, 2003, at 11:30 US/Pacific, Christian Lindig wrote: > > This is a fresh idea. But I get the impression that the essence of it > is > to decouple the name of a module from the name of the file that > contains > it. Somebody suggested already an -alias directive for similar > purposes. > > We have to decide whether we want this decoupling to happen at the > level > of the language (i.e. new syntax), or only the level of its > implementation (i.e. new compiler flags). Right now, the mapping of > module names to files is a matter of the compiler and mostly invisible > at the language level. Yeah, the more I think about this problem, the more convinced I am that the only way to solve the problem well enough to quiet the bulk of the complaining is to do something-- in the syntax of the language-- to couple the *name* of a module with the globally unique *identifier* of the library that contains it. It seems to me that the compiler and the linker should be taught that all libraries have a hierarchical URI attributed to them. These would not be locators. They would be identifiers. More importantly, to quiet the complaints about the real problem at hand-- promoting code re-use-- there should be new language syntax for specifying module paths to include the URI of the library. I hesitate to propose one, but Gerd may be onto something: module Q = Queue[http://ocaml.org/lib/3.1] There should also be well-defined functions for turning a library URI into an appropriate URL, e.g. a file:-scheme URL for local library paths, an http:-scheme URL for web library paths, etc. That's my take. I hope it doesn't suck. -- j h woodyatt <jhw@wetware.com> ------------------- To unsubscribe, mail caml-list-request@inria.fr Archives: http://caml.inria.fr Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs FAQ: http://caml.inria.fr/FAQ/ Beginner's list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ocaml_beginners