[Rd] legitimate use of :::

[Brian Lee Yung Rowe]

You raise an interesting point that I've mulled over a bit: namespace collisions. How many of these issues would go away if there were a better mechanism for managing namespaces? eg in other languages you can control which objects/modules you wish to import from a library. Under this regime I think package developers would be less concerned about exposing functions that otherwise would be private. 

On Aug 22, 2013, at 6:27 PM, Gabor Grothendieck <ggrothendieck at gmail.com> wrote:

> If ::: is disallowed then its likely that package developers will need
> to export more functions to satisfy the consumers of those otherwise
> hidden functions but if more functions are exported then there
> will be a greater likelihood of conflicts among packages.
> 
> The problem seems to be that there are potentially three sorts of
> functions here:
> 
> 1. a function is hidden
> 2. a function is accessible via ::: but is not on the search path
> 3. a function is on the search path
> 
> The problem arises in attempting to force fit these three concepts
> into only two
> categories either by removing the first category (as was done previously)
> or by removing the second category (which seems to be the new approach).