Re: About modules

[Neil Jerram <neil at ossau dot uklinux dot net>]

Marius Vollmer writes:

   [...about the "module" issue...]

   This managing of names is what we use to call the "module system", but
   I think it is important that we should _only_ be talking about a
   mechanism for managing names.

Am I correct in thinking that the environments interface (as specified
by Jim and implemented by Jost) provides what you describe here -
i.e. a mechanism for managing names?  If not, what is missing and/or
superfluous?

It seems to me that environments do provide the required mechanism,
except perhaps that they are more complex than we need.  To implement
the type of module system described by Jonathan Rees, for example, all
we need is a single environment type, in which the entry for a
particular name can hold, in addition to its vcell, a pointer to an
entry in another environment.  We still need an observer mechanism,
but per-entry rather than per-environment.

This seems a lot simpler than the combination of different environment
types (local, eval, import, export) described in Jim's interface.  So
what am I missing?

Regards,

        Neil