In article <41d68838@news.povray.org> , Bernd Fuhrmann <Sil### [at] gmxde>
wrote:

> And POVRay can do namespaces how? If it can do namespaces: Why isn't

Macros provide namespaces (#local), as do include files (#local in an
include file stays local to that file).  That there are no named namespaces
(which is what you are effectively asking for) is simply a matter of nobody
having written code for it.  It is easy to add even to the current parser.

Of course, namespaces are not an answer to naming convention problems.  You
can have the same namespace name in two files and run into the exact same
problem you created namespaces for in the first place.

The documentation advises users to not use all lower-case identifiers for
user defined declares and macros as lower-case identifiers are reserved for
use by POV-Ray.  This leaves plenty of names for users.  Prefixing has
almost the same effect as using namespaces, and looking at APIs of modern
operating systems, they do really well without need for namespaces despite
using tens of thousands of identifiers.  Of course named namespaces offer a
very valuable extension to any language, including POV-Ray SDL, not having
them is only a minor annoyance, not a huge problem.

    Thorsten

____________________________________________________
Thorsten Froehlich, Duisburg, Germany
e-mail: tho### [at] trfde

Visit POV-Ray on the web: http://mac.povray.org

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