[m-rev.] for review: naming magling, step 1

[Mark Brown]

On 04-Jan-2002, Zoltan Somogyi <zs at cs.mu.OZ.AU> wrote:
> For review by Fergus.
> 
> Zoltan.
> 
> The first step towards centralizing name construction and mangling issues
> in the browser directory.
> 
> This change does not update either util/mdemangle.c or profiler/demangle.m,
> even though it should. Both those files should be replaced by code that simply
> calls code in the browser directory (in the modules now added and in modules to
> be added later) to perform their job. In both cases, replacing them piecemeal
> is extra work of little value, so I intend to replace them only when all the
> issues related to names and mangling has been centralized in the browser
> directory.
> 
> browser/names.m:
> 	A new module for holding information about the structure of names.
> 
> browser/mangle.m:
> 	A new module for handling name mangling, i.e. the conversion of names
> 	to and from a form acceptable inside C identifiers.
> 
> 	It implements a new scheme for name manging, which (unlike the previous
> 	scheme) does not obscure a whole name just because one part contains
> 	characters that cannot occur in identifiers.
> 
> browser/dl.m:
> browser/name_mangle.m:
> 	Make these modules stand on their own, not as submodules of module mdb.
> 	They are needed in other places as well.

The reason we introduced the super-module mdb was to minimise a problem
with browser modules polluting the user's namespace.  Making these
modules standalone will cause that problem to re-occur, unless there is
something I missed.  Moving the modules out of mdb is fine, but you
should put them all in another super-module (e.g. mercury_util).

See http://www.cs.mu.oz.au/research/mercury/mailing-lists/mercury-developers/mercury-developers.0002/0026.html
for the original change.

(Note that I haven't reviewed this change.)

Cheers,
Mark.

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