Follow-up: I've factored out these two alternative approaches, both of which I
think are defensible.
Grammars:
http://wiki.ecmascript.org/doku.php?id=harmony:modules#syntax
Simple examples:
http://wiki.ecmascript.org/doku.php?id=harmony:modules#external_module_load
Dave
On Mar 21, 2012, at 5:25 PM, David Herman wrote:
> On Mar 21, 2012, at 3:44 PM, Luke Hoban wrote:
>
>> Great to see the updates. A couple of questions:
>>
>>>> import "foo.js" as Foo;
>>>> import foo from "foo.js";
>>
>> These two forms look rather confusingly similar given how different they
>> are, and the inversion of order of where the filename lives doesn't seem to
>> line up with the semantic difference between the two forms. It feels like
>> this is an attempt towards fluent syntax design, but to me at least, this
>> just doesn't feel easy to learn/remember/read.
>
> Yeah, I'm not trying to do fluent syntax per se; the goal is not
> COBOL/AppleScript. But it should still read well, in such a way as to avoid
> the off-by-one confusion inherent in being able to import a module or import
> its exports.
>
> Andreas also didn't like the inversion of order. I came to this because
> earlier versions of the syntax were inconsistent about whether `from` meant
> the-module-itself or an-export-of-the-module, which made it even more
> confusing. This new syntax was inspired by Python, but with `import` as the
> leading keyword, rather than `from`. Which is what leads to the inversion of
> order.
>
> I've gone through a few alternatives, but they all read more awkwardly to me:
>
> import Foo at "foo.js"; // ...maybe? *shrug*
> import Foo is "foo.js"; // reads awkwardly
> module Foo = "foo.js"; // looks like Foo is a string
> module Foo is "foo.js"; // just looks like an awkward workaround
>
>
>>>> module m = foo.bar.baz;
>>
>> Why isn't aliasing a remote module the same as aliasing a local module?
>> That is, why can't I say 'module m = "foo.js"' instead of 'import "foo.js"
>> as m'? It seems the whole syntactic surface area of modules would be
>> simpler if remote module identifiers were used in the same way as local
>> module bindings in the various syntactic forms. Since this seems to be the
>> way things are done on the RHS of 'import...from...', why be different in
>> 'module...=...'? I thought this is how things were originally - why change?
>
> Perhaps. I saw community members upset that we would use `module` as the
> keyword for importing external modules instead of `import`, e.g.:
>
> https://twitter.com/#!/substack/status/170161863814946816
>
> Moreover, Brendan felt that module...=..."..." looks too confusingly like
> you're assigning a string value. Others I spoke to, particularly those
> accustomed to Python, felt that `import` read better as the way to load
> external modules.
>
>> More broadly - is it possible to reduce further to just 'module...=...' and
>> 'import...from...'? Which mean "alias a module" and "import names from
>> inside a module" respectively.
>
> Certainly possible, yes. I think that's Andreas's preferred syntax as well. I
> think that's a viable alternative. Just based on my anecdotal experience
> talking to people so far, I suspect we'd find people's preferences split. The
> good news is that we are no longer constrained by technical details of the
> linking semantics as to which way we want to go. The bad news is that we'll
> have to pick a syntax, and some people will undoubtedly hate it. :-P
>
> Seriously, I don't feel religious about either of the two syntaxen. I think I
> will put up both alternatives on the wiki for a better head-to-head
> comparison.
>
> Thanks for the feedback,
> Dave
>
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