[mercury-users] Modules, Submodules and Instances.

[Fergus Henderson]

On 30-Jan-1999, David Glen JEFFERY <dgj at cs.mu.OZ.AU> wrote:
> On 29-Jan-1999, Ralph Becket <rwab1 at cam.sri.com> wrote:
> > 
> > (1) MODULE QUALIFIERS
> > 
> > I've noticed a drift from `name__' as a module qualifier to `name:' -
> > personally I find the former easier on the eyes, but oh well.  ':' is
> > yukky, '.' is nice.  How long will '__' stick around?  Will '.' ever
> > make it in?
> 
> AFAIK, '__' will stay around for ever, but ':' is deprecated. I'm fairly
> sure that the intention is for '.' to be implemented one of these days...
> fjh may be able to add more.

David is correct here.  The long-term intent is to use some other
symbol, probably '.'.  Please don't use `:', because we intend to drop
support for `:' as a module qualifier, and instead use `:' as a type
qualifier.  For now, you should use `__'.  When we get around to
implementing `.' or whatever, `__' will still be supported. 

(After a long transition period, we might eventually make support for `__',
conditional on a compiler flag for backwards compatibility, and after
a *very* long transition period, we might eventually remove support for
it altogether.  So '__' won't necessarily be around "for ever".  But
we wouldn't remove support for `__' entirely if it would cause anyone
significant backwards compatibility problems.)

-- 
Fergus Henderson <fjh at cs.mu.oz.au>  |  "Binaries may die
WWW: <http://www.cs.mu.oz.au/~fjh>  |   but source code lives forever"
PGP: finger fjh at 128.250.37.3        |     -- leaked Microsoft memo.