Re: MMD as an object.

[Rod Adams]

David Storrs wrote:
On Thu, Mar 10, 2005 at 02:22:20PM -0600, Rod Adams wrote:
 

David Storrs wrote:
   

On Wed, Mar 09, 2005 at 03:38:52PM -0600, Rod Adams wrote:
     

use Foo; # from above, exports &bar is MMD::Random
multi sub bar {...}
Does this generate an error, since one could expect this particular &bar 
to be Manhattan? Or does it assume Random, since there's already a &bar 
in existence? 
       

This seems like action-at-a-distance to me; 

     

Well, if you were not expecting Foo to export some &bar's, then you're 
in for a surprise regardless of dispatch when you call &bar in your code 
and one of Foo::bar gets called instead of one of yours, because it was 
a closer match.

I would say that people should know what they are getting into when they 
C< use > something. 
   


What I'm hearing you say here is "Yes, it's action-at-a-distance, but
it's your job to make sure it doesn't trip you up."  The problem that
I see is that I may well be able to keep track of everything from the
modules I import, but what about the ones THEY import...and the ones
THEY import...and so on.  In a medium-to-large software project, that
can get to be a lot of modules, very quickly.
 

The question is not what they import. The question is what they export 
into your package. If it's not exported into your package, the other 
multi's are in a different package, and get a different short name. I 
see the short name as including the package name for subs, class name 
for methods. Only the signature is chopped off.

I'm only asking you to keep track of what gets imported into your 
current package, which I do not think is asking for too much, even in a 
large scale project. Whatever your used modules have in their packages 
which they keep to themselves, including everything _they_ imported from 
_other_ modules, is not your concern... that's a different package space.

If you go pumping new multi's into someone else's package by saying C< 
multi sub Foo::Bar {...} >, well, you better be familiar with what's 
already there.

So, it could be considered action at a distance, but feels more like 
keeping track of what you've asked others to dump in your lap.

-- Rod Adams