[mercury-users] Re: your mail

[Ralph Becket]

Gregory D. Weber, Tuesday,  3 August 2004:
> 
> If it's good to fully qualify imported predicates, 
> why not also types and functions?

Type names appear in type expressions and function names appear in value
expressions; cluttering up expressions with module qualifiers can
seriously degrade their readability (consequently, it pays to choose
type and function names very carefully.)

Predicate names only appear once in a call (ignoring the occasional
higher order call) and often do something more complicated than a
function call, so including a module qualifier on imported predicate
names does not affect readability and allows the reader to go directly
to the right module if she wants to see the documentation for a given
predicate.

Of course, this is a guideline rather than a rule.  You wouldn't write
`int.(<)(X, Y)' rather than `X < Y'.

-- Ralph
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