[Haskell-cafe] Avoiding name collisions by using value spaces instead of modules

[Benjamin Franksen]

On Tuesday 17 January 2006 22:44, Brian Hulley wrote:
> Tomasz Zielonka wrote:
> > On Sun, Jan 08, 2006 at 01:06:18PM -0000, Brian Hulley wrote:
> >> 5) We can get all the advantages of automatic namespace management
> >> the OOP programmers take for granted, in functional programming,
> >> by using value spaces as the analogue of objects, and can thereby
> >> get rid of complicated import/export directives
> >
> > There is nothing complicated in Haskell's module system. It's very
> > simple, explicit, independent from the type system and therefore
> > easy to understand.
>
> There are many concepts that one needs to understand ie
> importing/exporting, qualified/unqualified, hiding, selecting, and a
> strange syntax that looks like tuples but isn't anything to do with
> tuples.

Hey, you managed to summarize almost all features of Haskell's module 
system within less than 4 lines of text. It can't be that complicated, 
can it? ;-)

(This isn't meant to dismiss your proposal. I've sometimes been thinking 
along similar lines.)

Ben