A very loose analogy is that a namespace is like "all the people
with the first name John" whereas a scope is "all the people who
live on my street." In the first case, you're grouping by
nomenclature (variables named $main::something vs variables
named $other_package::something) and in the second you're
grouping by locality (all the my() variables in a particular
set of braces).
-joseph
On 27 Jan, Jonathan Feinberg wrote:
> My students caught me off guard when they pointed out that sometimes I use
> the word "scope", as when I'm discussing my(), and that sometimes I use the
> word "namespace", as when I'm discussing packages. They wanted me to help
> them understand the difference, and I found myself nonplussed. I don't
> want to have to go into typeglobs and the package namespace hash, since
> they're not ready for those concepts.
>
> Is there any pithy way to distinguish between the two concepts?
>
