[cfe-dev] Adding namespaces to Objective-C

[Owen Shepherd]

On 10 Nov 2010, at 19:23, Ariel V Feinerman wrote:

> I think prefixes are more beautiful than namespaces (by the way they are simple for runtime support ;-). There is no diversity between NSSet or NS::Set, excepting one or more unnecessary letters, so why? The namespaces do not increase the culture, then if prefixes can conflict so namespaces can likewise. 

Objective-C at present doesn't give you a choice. Your namespace must be short, or else be very cumbersome to use. Hence, everyone uses 2 character prefixes (or 3 at most), which are prone to clashes.

On the other hand, if namespaces were supported, it is likely that NSObject would be called something along the lines of Foundation::Object, and other libraries would also use longer namespace names. This would not make programs any longer due to features such as "using namespace" and/or namespace aliases (e.g. something along the lines of C++0x's "using NS = Foundation", or even "using F = Foundation") and the ability to import entities from one namespace into another (e.g. "using Foundation::Object").

Namespaces give us the ability to have longer entity names, without the inconvenience this would normally cause.

-- Owen Shepherd
http://www.owenshepherd.net/
owen.shepherd at e43.eu (general) / oshepherd1 at shef.ac.uk (university)